For fun, I created a group of timers (group.timers) consisting of timer.a and timer.b
I was surprised to learn that timer.cancel could be applied to group.timers and it does cancel all active timers in the group.
The weird thing is that if the timers in the group are active, the group is off. Conversely, if the timers in the group are idle, the group is on. That seems counterintuitive, but I could work around it.
EDIT: However, the fact that it seems to be reverse-sensing makes me wonder if the ability to make a group of timers was never really intended, but instead was an oversight which could be one day be “corrected” by not allowing timers to be in a group.
Thoughts are welcomed. Should I use my group of timers, or is it a crime against nature?
You could make a template sensor that will return whatever you want (boolean or whatever text you wish) as well as an attribute list of the timers or the maximum and minimum duration of the group, etc. etc… I have a huge number of independent timers for a variety of things. Not sure what you mean by this statement: However, it makes me wonder if a group of timers is advisable, or is the fact that I can make one simply an artifact that will be cleaned up in the future?"
Good question. I’ve edited my post to hopefully be more clear.
I think part of my concern is that groups seem to be second-class citizens of the hass universe considering they don’t even get their own UI in the Settings menu.
I’m going to answer my own question because the states of group.timer do not allow me to know what I need to know. I’ll make template switches.