Trigger an automation if the illumination never exceeds a certain amount

Configuration
1

Similar noob question here: I have a low light automation that works fine if the illumination goes down (crosses the BELOW threshhold) during the day, but is there a way to trigger an automation if the illumination never exceeds a certain amount? Is that a simple matter of adding an ABOVE value to the automation with the BELOW threshhold?

2

Depends on what you have, and what you want to do. Share your automation (use code markup) and explain more.

3

Never is a very long time. In realistic time scales, are you prepared to wait until the end of the hour, day, week, or year?

Please define your trigger needs a bit better.

4

I am interested in turning on a light between sunrise and sunset on any given day if the illumination does not rise above a certain level. I have working automations that handle the situation that the light level falls below or rises above a certain level, but my question is since there would be no change in light level if it starts out dark and stays that way (say on a rainy day), do I need to check on a time schedule?

5

You need to work out what the trigger is.

What thing will cause the light to turn on, under what conditions.

Maybe a time trigger (time is 10:00) with a numeric state condition (light below 5 lux), maybe something else.

6

So I think what you are saying is there must be a trigger, whether occupancy, period of time, light level change–but HA won’t keep checking on its own. Some event or state change has to happen. Which now makes perfect sense as I think about it more.

7

Trigger it by light level change (no below or above number) and condition below a certain light level.

8

I had tried that but always get an error message “Message malformed: must contain at least one of below, above”. But it looks like I can set Above to -1 and it will save.

9

Your trigger needs to look like this

trigger:
  - platform: state
    entity_id:
      - sensor.your_illuminance sensor
      -

You then don’t need an above or below

10

I was using the device rather than state. Thanks!

11

No problem glad to help :slight_smile:

1 Like
12

Correct, that’s how automations work, they all have a trigger that defines when they start processing.