Time between two events (on/off)

Configuration
1

I’d like to get a notification when my vacuum cleaner is finished. The message should contain information about how long the vacuum cleaner was cleaning.

- alias: vacuum time notification
  trigger:
    platform: state
    entity_id: vacuum.deebot
    from: 'on'
    to: 'off'
  action:
    - service: notify.device1
      data:
        message: "time: {{ relative_time(states.vacuum.deebot.last_changed) }}"

I think this won’t work, because the last change will always be right now. How is it possible to measure the time between the last on and off event? @petro could you help (again).

2

You should be able to use the trigger state object to access the state prior to the trigger. So something like trigger.from_state.last_changed I think.

But that only works if there are only two possible states, off and on. If that is true, you also don’t need the from.

3

Unfortunately this did not work. Tried this in my automation:

message: "time: {{ trigger.from_state.last_changed }}"

Error rendering template for call_service at pos 1: UndefinedError: 'trigger' is undefined

Also it’s hard to play with this because I can’t use templates to debug. Hope there is another way.

4

That’s because you can’t use templates everywhere. In this case you need to use a data_template. There are several examples in the template page I linked earlier. Each integration will also usually mention something:

5

Even with putting in data_template I get this error again.

Is it really possible to use this:
trigger.from_state.last_changed

Because in the examples there is no single one that tells you can put .last_called at the end.

6

What error did you get, the same one? That error message indicated that the trigger variable is not available, not last_changed. Maybe post the updated automation you have now?

The very first example in the automation templating page I linked uses trigger.from_state in the action. I can’t think of why last_changed wouldn’t be available either, it’s part of the same state object. You could try a test and see if trigger.from_state.state is working, just like in the example.

7

Yes, I get the same error.

I tried it again with trigger.from_state.state but still the same error. Could you try it yourself with some automation?
I also tried trigger.from_state and still the same error.

This is the automation

- alias: vacuum time notification
  trigger:
    platform: state
    entity_id: vacuum.deebot
    to: 'off'
  action:
    - service: notify.device1
      data:
        message: "time: {{ trigger.from_state.state }}"
8

I found the mistake I made. I triggered the automation using the Trigger button of the automation pop up. Of course that was stupid.

Now I triggered it with setting the device status of the entity and I get an output.

With:

time: {{ trigger.to_state.last_changed - trigger.from_state.last_changed }}

I get something like

time: 0:00:08.829251

I’d like to cut off the decimals. Best way would be to convert it in minutes. Seconds are not important for this.

For example

0:05:03.45665 should be shown as 5 min

9 
{{ (trigger.to_state.last_changed - trigger.from_state.last_changed).seconds | round(0) }}
10

Thanks.

Tried to use .minutes instead of .seconds, but that did not work. So this is what I use now and it works:

time: {{ ((trigger.to_state.last_changed - trigger.from_state.last_changed).seconds / 60) | round(0) }} min

Thank you both!

11

that won’t work because timedelta objects do not have a minutes property. They only have days and seconds. FYI a subtracting 2 datetime objects returns a timedelta object. These are documented in python documents, not ansible/jinja2.

12

Thanks for clearing that up.