Toggle light switch

Configuration
1

I have a motion light in my backyard and I want to have them stay on from dusk to dawn.

If I manually turn the z-wave switch for this light off and then back on (within 2 seconds), the lights change from motion operation to dusk to dawn operation.

Is there a way to do this action in a single automation rule, or do I need to create a script? My hesitance in using scripts is that I want to migrate to a docker setup and I’m not sure if I can do scripts in dockers.

Thank you in advance for your ideas.

2

the docker is just the virtual environment that the HA OS will run in.
Automations and scripts don’t care.
In fact you should do a snapshot of your system before you change so you can start from where you left off.
Why do you want motion activation during the day ?
And Why not just have them on motion activation ALL night ?
You can use the sunrise and sunset triggers for those time elements then use a delay for a 1 sec delay between turning off and then back on again.
Define what and when you want it and we’ll have a go

I’m assuming Sunset - on - 2 secs - off - one sec - on
Sunrise - off

Is that it ?

What is your entity id ?
Do you have sun.sun as a component ?

3

Hello Muttley,

I have a binary_sensor called low light level that I use to trigger turning on other lights around my house. I think I just add a delay to the actions section of my automation between the turn on and turn off commands?

Does this look correct?

  action:
    - service: homeassistant.turn_off
      entity_id: 
        - switch.ge_12722_on_off_relay_switch_switch
    - delay:
        seconds: 50
    - service: homeassistant.turn_on
      entity_id: 
        - switch.ge_12722_on_off_relay_switch_switch

Thanks again for your help,
John

4

You can try using the example you posted with a delay of 1 second. Theoretically, it should simulate the manual operation you described (turn off/on within 2 seconds).

In practice, you may (and I stress “may”) encounter the issue of propagation delays in the z-wave network (i.e. the time it takes to transmit a command to the device and for the device to reply with an acknowledgement … especially if many other commands were recently transmitted). It probably won’t happen but it’s good to be aware that there’s a slight chance of it.

5

He would only hit a problem if his communication propagation delay was > tha 1 sec. Say 1.2 to 1.8 secs
He could then try removing the delay, the actions would queue in the z-wave controller and go out say 1.2 to 1.8 secs apart.???
Dunno, I’m guessing.

6

Think about what happens if there’s a lot of traffic and so the queue has several commands waiting for their turn. That’s when the need to ensure the second command is received within 2 seconds of the first one might be jeopardized. My rule of thumb is to avoid expecting any lighting technology to provide sub-second responsiveness under all loading conditions. Therefore if I needed to perform a timing-critical operation, I would not expect 100% reliability when the required time-interval is close to 1 second.

7

I would agree, I’m just hoping there’s a ‘get out of jail card’ else he’ll have to go via MQTT with a iot device (or similar).
Worst case a second switch operating a timer relay 1 sec, though the wiring may be interesting (Chinese curse type) :rofl: