Reading text and time from a python file and having it as a sensor in HA

[bachoo786]

Right I have done that thanks for that.

I have 2 things to overcome, one is to show the date like below:

@Tinkerer

Football Times

Saturday 26 August 2017

How can I achieve this? as its not a string and the date updates every day I believe. So the code you gave above I cannot use like we did to find the times of certain teams playing.

Secondly, I have done the following to activate the automation according to the time of the state of the entity. However it doesn’t fire the automation for some reason.

- alias: United Time
  initial_state: 'on'
  trigger:
    platform: template
    value_template: '{{ now.time().strftime("%H:%M") == states.sensor.manutd.state }}'
  action:
   - service: notify.me
     data:
       message: 'Manutd Playing Now'

Any ideas?

Many thanks for your help buddy.

UPDATE:

Ignore the first part of the obstacle. I need the automation to work but I have a feeling that HA is not recording the time from the text file as time rather its taking it as a number.

Is there anyway I could resolve this? because my automation is testing the current time against the sensor value of ‘Manutd’ and it doesn’t trigger unfortunately.

[RobDYI]

I seached the forum and found this

Manipulating time string in template ideas?

Hi all, I’m nearly done building an alarm clock but as the final touch I’d like to use my input select with different alarm times to also set up the transition of my hue lights. However, I’d like my hue lights to begin to transition on 30 minutes before the alarm triggers… any idea how I can easily convert a string like “05:15” (the option selected on my input select) and also subtract 30 minutes from it so I can use it as a condition on an automation? I’m a bit stuck. I’ve tried converting i…

so maybe this might work, try it in your dev templating to see its output quickly

{{ strptime(states.sensor.manutd.state , “%H:%M”) }}

if it does, just change this line or perhaps change the sensor so it reads as time.

    value_template: '{{ now.time().strftime("%H:%M") == strptime(states.sensor.manutd.state , “%H:%M”) }}'

[bachoo786]

@RobDYI

so maybe this might work, try it in your dev templating to see its output quickly

{{ strptime(states.sensor.manutd.state , “%H:%M”) }}

The above returns the following:

1900-01-01 12:30:00

and when I use value_template: '{{ now.time().strftime("%H:%M") == strptime(states.sensor.manutd.state , “%H:%M”) }}’ it does not work because of the date in the state of sensor.manutd

[RobDYI]

I had the wrong quotes, they need to be ' not ’

'{{ now.time().strftime("%H:%M") == strptime(states.sensor.manutd.state) , "%H:%M") }}'

’

[bachoo786]

I thought you had ‘ and not ’ in your previous message. I dont see any change mate and I get the same result as above.

[RobDYI]

I should work, does states.sensor.manutd.state give you a text with only ##:## ? I highlighted were the quotes might be wrong as it appear wrong in your last post.

[bachoo786]

yeah I realised what you were saying but in my config I have got the correct quotes and the automation still does not fire. Did you try it in your dev template ?

I added a time sensor component and got my automation working. This is my automation:

• alias: Test
  initial_state: ‘on’
  trigger:
  platform: template
  value_template: ‘{{ states.sensor.test.state == states.sensor.time.state }}’
  action:
  • service: notify.me
    data:
    message: ‘Test’

However, I noticed a lag of 4-5 seconds with the sensor time component before the automation triggers.

[RobDYI]

So does that maudt sensor work? I don’t have a time sensor in text to try but this work so it appears to be correct format.

value_template: '{{ states.sensor.manutd.state == states.sensor.time.state }}'

[bachoo786]

@RobDYI

value_template: ‘{{ states.sensor.manutd.state == states.sensor.time.state }}’

This works but like I mentioned there is a lag of 4-5 seconds before the action is triggered. I cannot work it out why.

But this : '{{ now.time().strftime("%H:%M") == strptime(states.sensor.manutd.state) , "%H:%M") }}' does not work I think its because of the date i.e. 1900-01-01 as the trigger does not match with the now time.

[bachoo786]

is there a way were I could trigger the automation 5 seconds earlier?

[Dolores]

I have a dumb (and belated…) question: I thought you can’t import libraries into python scripts? How did you do this?

[bachoo786]

I run the script using cron independent from HA…the output of the script is then saved as a text file and integrated with HA using the file sensor component.