Sanity Check for Efficiency

Configuration
1

I’m setting up something similar to BabyBuddy for my snakes. One of the things is a “quick input” keypad to set the dates for items (feeding, substrate changes, shedding). I currently have a six button keypad setup with ESPHome. I’ve got one button setup that is working, but I’m wondering if there’s a simpler way.

I have an automation when I hit button 1 to set an input_text sensor to the current date (MM/DD/YYYY).

alias: Blaidd Ate Date/Time
description: ""
trigger:
  - platform: state
    entity_id:
      - binary_sensor.blaidd_keypad_bt_button_1
    to: "on"
    from: "off"
condition: []
action:
  - service: input_text.set_value
    metadata: {}
    data:
      value: "{{ as_timestamp(now())|timestamp_custom(\"%m/%d/%y\") }}"
    target:
      entity_id: input_text.blaidd_last_ate_date
mode: single

I then have a template sensor to keep track of how many days since the last feeding.

{% set delta = as_timestamp(now()) - as_timestamp(strptime(states("input_text.blaidd_last_ate_date"),"%m/%d/%y")) %}
{% set deltaRound = (delta/86400)|round(0,"floor") %}
{{ deltaRound }}

In addition to double-checking things. I’m trying to make sure nothing causes issues down the road. The plan will be to have automations setup to push a notification the day before the next feeding is due to thaw out their prey. I would like to be able to do statistics in the long run, but I have logs offloading to Splunk and should be able to just handle that in there.

2

What was the reason for choosing to store the date in an Input Text instead of an Input Datetime?

3

Because I totally missed it. I think I just figured out a text sensor would work and ran with it.

4

If the goal is "Sanity check for Efficiency " then you may wish to consider using Input Datetime to store a date. It makes date math a bit simpler.

1 Like
5

Awesome sauce…so this advice coupled with your post here:

got me to where I want.

1 Like