Scenes refusing to set due to entity states

Configuration
1

Bear with me here; this is a bit convoluted. The short version is, when I instruct Home Assistant (“hass”, current version as of today) to scene.turn_on, hass tries to check the state of the entity against the definition of the scene, and thus refuses to work if it already thinks that the scene meets my conditions. I want to force the scene, because I’m smarter than hass.

Here’s proof from the log:

2020-04-28 16:16:24 DEBUG (MainThread) [homeassistant.components.websocket_api.http.connection.140153514010896] Received {'type': 'call_service', 'domain': 'scene', 'service': 'turn_on', 'service_data': {'entity_id': 'scene.first_floor_from_foyer_on'}, 'id': 36}
2020-04-28 16:16:24 DEBUG (MainThread) [homeassistant.core] Bus:Handling <Event call_service[L]: domain=scene, service=turn_on, service_data=entity_id=scene.first_floor_from_foyer_on>
2020-04-28 16:16:24 DEBUG (MainThread) [homeassistant.core] Bus:Handling <Event call_service[L]: domain=switch, service=turn_on, service_data=entity_id=switch.first_floor_from_foyer_insteon_scene>
2020-04-28 16:16:24 DEBUG (MainThread) [homeassistant.core] Bus:Handling <Event state_changed[L]: entity_id=switch.first_floor_from_foyer_insteon_scene, old_state=<state switch.first_floor_from_foyer_insteon_scene=off; friendly_name=First Floor from Foyer Insteon Scene, assumed_state=True @ 2020-04-28T16:13:02.548131-04:00>, new_state=<state switch.first_floor_from_foyer_insteon_scene=on; friendly_name=First Floor from Foyer Insteon Scene, assumed_state=True @ 2020-04-28T16:16:24.591618-04:00>>
2020-04-28 16:16:24 DEBUG (MainThread) [homeassistant.core] Bus:Handling <Event call_service[L]: domain=mqtt, service=publish, service_data=topic=insteon/modem/scene, qos=0, retain=False, payload={ "cmd" : "on", "group" : 3 }>
2020-04-28 16:16:24 DEBUG (MainThread) [homeassistant.components.mqtt] Transmitting message on insteon/modem/scene: { "cmd" : "on", "group" : 3 }

This scene turns on okay. Note that this scene is a single “switch,” which is really a stateless MQTT switch to execute an Insteon scene with multiple lights. It’s “optimistic,” because Insteon scenes don’t have state, just like hass scenes.

Here, though, I want a different scene to turn off some of the same lights:

2020-04-28 16:18:23 DEBUG (MainThread) [homeassistant.components.websocket_api.http.connection.140153514010896] Received {'type': 'call_service', 'domain': 'scene', 'service': 'turn_on', 'service_data': {'entity_id': 'scene.first_floor_from_laundry_off'}, 'id': 37}
2020-04-28 16:18:23 DEBUG (MainThread) [homeassistant.core] Bus:Handling <Event call_service[L]: domain=scene, service=turn_on, service_data=entity_id=scene.first_floor_from_laundry_off>
2020-04-28 16:18:23 DEBUG (MainThread) [homeassistant.components.websocket_api.http.connection.140153514010896] Sending {'id': 37, 'type': 'result', 'success': True, 'result': {'context': Context(user_id='2ad573921ff548419884dacf3eb59b60', parent_id=None, id='5d926cf5ac064dafac42d4413406bd51')}}

The Insteon scenes overlap; but because hass doesn’t think that the “switch” is on, so instead of following my scene instructions, just doesn’t run the service. This is where I’m smarter than hass.

One workaround, of course, is to stop using Insteon scenes; I’ve yet to try this with hass because past automation solutions tended to be slow, and Insteon scenes are lightning fast; I’d like to keep them if possible. Is there another workaround, or something I’m missing?

Thanks.

1 Like
2

Never mind. Apparently scenes are stupid in Home Assistant, as of 101. I’ve since discovered scripts, which work as intended, and then some. Thanks for looking anyway!

3

I’me facing the same problem, and before moving from scenes to scripts (or nodered), just wondering if anybody found a way to configure the scenes so that it tries to turn off the lights even if they appear to be already off (they are dumb RF lights)

4

It seems when integrating a 3rd party system which may be stateless for scenes, that HA’s decision to not support a scene “off” functionality bites us in the butt. All of the workarounds for us to make it function right seem like a LOT of work compared to supporting the off option. I’m trying to do it in a custom component and may brain hurts (I’m stuck).

5

I managed to fix this for myself. It involves a simple edit of the python code. I would like to come up with a cleaner fix at some stage, and perhaps provide a PR, but hopefully this will be enough to get most people moving. This is all particular to version 2021.2.1

If you can find the root of the HA codebase, open homeassistant/lib/python3.8/site-packages/homeassistant/components/light/reproduce_state.py in a text editor, and for me on line 98 there is a comment that says “Return if we are already at the right state.”. If you can comment this out by inserting '#' at the start of each of the next five lines this will disable the state checking feature for all lights.

    # Return if we are already at the right state.
#    if cur_state.state == state.state and all(
#        check_attr_equal(cur_state.attributes, state.attributes, attr)
#        for attr in ATTR_GROUP + COLOR_GROUP
#    ):
#        return

I am conscious that this feature is here for a reason, but for my system everything seems to be fine. Anyone trying this out should bear this in mind however.

7

New lines in 2021.11

again for docker i run

sudo docker exec -i homeassistant /bin/bash -c "sed -i '142,150 s/^/#/' /usr/src/homeassistant/homeassistant/components/light/reproduce_state.py"
sudo docker exec -i homeassistant /bin/bash -c "sed -i '44,45 s/^/#/' /usr/src/homeassistant/homeassistant/components/switch/reproduce_state.py"
8

I changed it to this:

sudo docker exec -i homeassistant /bin/bash << "  EOF"
  file="/usr/src/homeassistant/homeassistant/components/light/reproduce_state.py"
  line=$(awk '/# Return if we are already at the right state./{ print NR; exit }' $file)
  line2=$((line + 9))
  echo "Comment $line to $line2 in ${file:47}"
  sed -i "${line},${line2} s/^/#/" $file

  file="/usr/src/homeassistant/homeassistant/components/switch/reproduce_state.py"
  line=$(awk '/# Return if we are already at the right state./{ print NR; exit }' $file)
  line2=$((line + 2))
  echo "Comment $line to $line2 in ${file:47}"
  sed -i "${line},${line2} s/^/#/" $file
  EOF

It detect where to begin auto-magic :grinning:

9

Nice!! now all we need is a button inside homeassistant that can do this for us. or a config checkbox so we don’t have to remember to run that after every upgrade and we are set :slight_smile:

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