I am trying to great a small state machine with an input boolean. My dog is either inside, outside or unknown. This is a typical bee in a box problem. If my dog is inside and the cameras see a dog outside, then I should be alerted, because that’s not my dog outside. If my dog is outside, he will remain outside until the doors are opened to let him in. If he’s outside for more than 15 minutes and also waiting at the deck, I want to get notified.
When I open the door, I need the state of my dog to become unknown, and stay unknown for 60 seconds after I close my door. If during that 60 period, the cameras see him outside, then the state become ‘true’, otherwise, after 60 seconds I can assume he’s inside.
With an MQTT binary sensor, I can set it to unavailable or unknown, but I can’t find a way to do the same with a binary helper. So far, it seems my only solution is to create an MQTT binary sensor and publish the state to it. Is there a way to achieve the same with a binary helper?