I put this yaml together (with much help from the Facebook community!) because currently there’s no sunrise/set option available in the ‘helpers’ UI menu, only time of day/week/etc - hopefully it’ll soon be included and this post will become obsolete, I’ll raise a WTH after this.
This yaml creates binary sensors to set periods of the day based around sunset/rise, rather than time of day. For example, this sensor ‘sunset 01 minus 45’ is ON from 45 mins before sunset untill 1 second before sunset, otherwise it is OFF. I am using these time slots to trigger scenes in automations.
Note the negative offset in this one because it is before sunset. Later entries don’t have ‘-’ on the hrs:min:sec before/after offset
To keep things tidy, I’ve created a new file called ‘binary_sensor.yaml’ and put an !include line in my config.yaml You can call anythingyoulike.yaml
Here’s the yaml. There’s 10 binary sensors based around sunset and 3 based around sunrise, and one that takes up the gap in between. They’re in 45 min increments - obviously you’ll want to adjust the offsets to your latitude/season and use case
## these binary sensors are ON during
## their 45 min time slots triggered by sunSET with offset
## else OFF
- platform: tod
name: Sunset 01 minus 45
after: sunset
after_offset: "-00:45:00"
before: sunset
before_offset: "-00:00:01"
- platform: tod
name: Sunset 02 sunset actual
after: sunset
after_offset: "00:00:00"
before: sunset
before_offset: "00:44:59"
- platform: tod
name: Sunset 03 plus 0.45
after: sunset
after_offset: "00:45:00"
before: sunset
before_offset: "01:29:59"
- platform: tod
name: Sunset 04 plus 1.30
after: sunset
after_offset: "01:30:00"
before: sunset
before_offset: "02:14:59"
- platform: tod
name: Sunset 05 plus 2.15
after: sunset
after_offset: "02:15:00"
before: sunset
before_offset: "02:59:59"
- platform: tod
name: Sunset 06 plus 3.0
after: sunset
after_offset: "03:00:00"
before: sunset
before_offset: "03:44:59"
- platform: tod
name: Sunset 07 plus 3.45
after: sunset
after_offset: "03:45:00"
before: sunset
before_offset: "04:29:59"
- platform: tod
name: Sunset 08 plus 4.30
after: sunset
after_offset: "04:30:00"
before: sunset
before_offset: "05:14:59"
- platform: tod
name: Sunset 09 plus 5.15
after: sunset
after_offset: "05:15:00"
before: sunset
before_offset: "05:44:59"
- platform: tod
name: Sunset 10 plus 5.45 to sunrise minus 15
after: sunset
after_offset: "05:45:00"
before: sunrise
before_offset: "-00:14:59"
## these binary sensors are ON during
## their 45 min time slots triggered by sunRISE with offset
## else OFF
- platform: tod
name: Sunrise 01 minus 0.15
after: sunrise
after_offset: "-00:15:00"
before: sunrise
before_offset: "00:29:59"
- platform: tod
name: Sunrise 02 plus 0.30
after: sunrise
after_offset: "00:30:00"
before: sunrise
before_offset: "01:14:59"
- platform: tod
name: Sunrise 03 plus 1.15
after: sunrise
after_offset: "01:15:00"
before: sunrise
before_offset: "02:29:59"
After a quick reboot, they will all then show up in ‘entities’
Here’s an entities card I did just as proof of concept:
And here’s a basic automation requiring ‘sunrise 01’ sensor to be ON as a condition
I’m only just implementing them, I plan to tweak them, possibly adding seasonal variations - in my northern winter, the time interva I want to change my scenes by can be long because - it gets dark really early (I wrote it in winter, hence 45 min increments) but in summer, I want it to cycle the scenes quickly, because sunset is after kids’ bedtimes.
However, I’m pretty sure sun will be properly integrated in the helpers menu very soon and this will become unnecessary, in the meantime I hope it helps someone out. My ideal would be to see this in the GUI with sliders to set the offsets, but that is further down the rabbit hole…
This is the first thing I’ve added to the community and I’m really grateful to all who helped me learn enough to share 
Any comments and improvement are most welcome.