Random photo file renaming

Configuration
1

Hi. I’m hoping for some help from someone far cleverer than me. My local folder has 10 photos in it photo1.jpg, photo2.jpg…photo10.jpg. When an automation is triggered I’d like it to copy a random one of the photos to a file called screensaver.jpg. For background I intend to use this as the screensaver for a tablet that I have running the Wallpanel app. My experience is generally using the GUI for automations so I really haven’t got a clue how to start

2

Here is a template for making up a random photo filename:

{% set r = range(1, 11) | list | random %}
{{ "photo" ~ r ~ ".jpg" }}

If you use this in your automation, every time it triggers you will get a different filename.

Now you can make a shell command to copy the file, e.g. (depending on the paths you need):

copy_photo: "cp /home/homeassistant/.homeassistant/www/{{filename}} /home/homeassistant/.homeassistant/www/screensaver.jpg"

Putting this together to trigger the rotation every 5 minutes using a time_pattern trigger:

- alias: "Rotate photo"
  trigger:
    platform: time_pattern
    minutes: "/5"
  action:
    service: shell_command.copy_photo
    data:
      filename: >
        {% set r = range(1, 11) | list | random %}
        {{ "photo" ~ r ~ ".jpg" }}

This is all untested.

3

Hi,
Thanks for the reply. I’m always impressed by how easily people can produce code like this. Unfortunately I don’t think this is quite I’m after so I probably didn’t explain it well enough…I don’t want the file to have a random name, I want it to always be called screensaver.jpg but I want home assistant to pick 1 of 10 random photo files to have that name. So essentially pick 1 of photo1.jpg, photo2.jpg, photo3.jpg…photo10.jpg to be copied to screensaver.jpg overwriting whatever photo was that file before. The trigger is perfect for me to have a 5 minute cycle though thanks.

4

That’s exactly what this does: It takes a random photo*.jpg file and copies it to screensaver.jpg. That is what the shell command does. The rest is to determine which random photo to pick, on an interval.

This is how to read the action of the automation: filename is a parameter for the shell command. The value of filename will be a random photo*.jpg value. In the shell command, filename is the source from which the copy will be made.

5

Apologies, I should have read the first part properly rather than skipping to the automation but I was trying to get the kids to bed! I’ll have a go this evening and see how I get on. Thanks so much for your patience.

6

All good. Let me know how it goes and I’ll try to help fix anything that doesn’t work (because I didn’t test what I wrote, but it is snippets from a similar idea in my own config, so the parts separately do work).

7

Proof that not all heroes wear capes…worked perfectly once I recognised that my file path is different to yours because I’m on home assistant OS and I’m assuming you’re either in docker or a VE. Thanks again for your help.

1 Like
8

Haha, great! Yup, I’m running core in a venv.