This all works great - but I would like to expand on it, so that different ‘turn_on’ scripts will be triggered based on the time of day, so that telling HomeKit to ’Turn on Family Room Lights’ will turn on bright lights during the day, and dim lights during the evening/night. This simplification will help out with family
So for example:
switch:
- platform: template
switches:
familyroomlights:
friendly_name: Family Room Lights
value_template: "{{ is_state('switch.familyroomlights', 'on') }}"
turn_on:
service: script.turn_on
data_template:
****If between 9am and 6pm then****
entity_id: script.familyroombright
****else if between 6pm and 9am then****
entity_id: script.familyroomdim
turn_off:
service: script.turn_on
data_template:
entity_id: script.familyroomoff
I have been researching timestamping and templating the last few days but sadly my head is not absorbing it very well!
Does anybody have any advice how I may achieve this?
I would imagine i’m making another format error here but from reading the jinja2 documentation I can’t see where. Trying to achieve the hours to be between sunrise and sunset.
As an FYI, scripts also support templating in their actions. Right now it looks like you’ve created 3 different scripts, one to turn the light brightly, one to turn the light on dimly and one to turn it off. The logic of what brightness to turn the light to is then in here in this switch.
I might suggest an alternate approach. Since you didn’t show us your script i’m going to assume for this example that your light is called light.familyroomlights. Feel free to change that to whatever id you do use. Your script could then do something like this:
script:
familyroomon:
alias: Family room on
sequence:
- service: light.turn_on
entity_id: light.familyroomlights
data_template:
brightness_pct: >-
{% if is_state(sun.sun, 'above_horizon') %}
100
{% else %}
50
{% endif %}
The benefit of this is that your switch can be simplified to just calling either script.familyroomon or script.familyroomoff. It also means you can change the logic of this script without restarting home assistant (since changes to switches require a restart but you can change scripts right from the UI). And it means your script can be used elsewhere in your automations on its own since it includes the logic of what state to set the light to based on time of day.
Take a look at the doc on scripts to see more of what scripts can do, they’re pretty powerful. They also support parameters and conditionals if you wanted to add to this logic based on other sensor data over time.
Further to this - in response to the setup for that room:
Yes, I have three scripts. Each script triggers a scene (for lighting), but may also have other things like switching music off for example, for which the flexibility of a script is much more useful.
But using the logic you explained I can adjust this to trigger different scenes/scripts based on the horizon.
Well you are, specifically at sunrise and sunset. These are times of the day, or at least events that you specifically tried to interpret as times.
You generally need to be more flexible in your interpretation of how you approach a trigger for your controls.
Pretty much anything you can put in a script you can put in an automation though you can’t always do the opposite.
Read examples across the forum, ask questions, look at other people’s work, try to understand how they work, then adapt them to your needs.
Ok thank you! Yes - that’s been the most helpful part so far, reading the forum, adapting other’s code and learning the basics. Sometimes though you just need a little help and someone to go “Like this!”
