I’m fairly new to Home Assistant and after setting up some sensors etc. I have started dipping my toes into automation. Apart from configuring some “simple” automations I followed an existing example for how to create an alarm clock that can send a push notification…and got it working.
Now I want to create a new automation that should trigger on a time that is based on a given time, like an alarm clock, but depending on the outside temperature the actual trigger time should be X minutes ahead of the given time. It is supposed to turn on an electrical car heater and to be eco friendly it should be enabled as short as possible and the time you set is the time that the car should be warm and ready.
Example:
Departure time is set to 8:00
If the outside temp is 0 to -5 the trigger time should be 7:00 (1 hour before)
If the outside temp is -5 to -10 the trigger time should be 6:45 (1 hour 15 mins before)
If the outside temp is -10 to -15 the trigger time should be 6:30 (1 hour 30 mins before)
Does this make sense?
If so, any ideas on how I can go about to achieve something like this?
Somewhat…I just started looking at automations and followed a guide for how to create an alarm clock with a UI where you have sliders to set hour and minute. And I got that working…so now i’m interested in learning more
Your suggestion looks great…thanks…just what I had in mind. I already have this functionality in the remote switch i’m going to control. But the UI for that is not user-friendly so I was hoping to create something better in HA, either by doing it like this, or with a form where I just ask for the time and when you enable it it posts the required http request to the remote switch.
I played a bit with it last night but there is something wrong with the value_template because the configuration was not valid. But I will go over it again tonight and see if I can find out what was wrong, most likey something on my end
So I will revisit my config again and if I still fail to make it work I will post my config.
You can try the template in the developer tools, “templates” icon. This way, you can test different options before altering the actual configuration. You don’t have to restart everytime neither.
Maybe there’s one ‘)’ too many after 120 in my example ?
Many thanks to both of you…I now have a working concept that I can fine tune to my needs
@petro Your example almost worked straight away…there was just one slight error in the automation part. There is a reference to sensor.start_car_charge, but it should be binary_sensor.start_car_charge. Once I change that, and my other references, it started working.
@Mister_Slowhand I liked your way of gradually changing the start time instead of having fixed intervals. So i’m going to give try to change what I have into that now.
There is a pretty steep learning curve with HA…but i’m starting to grasp bits of the automation part so now I can start experimenting a bit more. But first I need to try to make something nice with Lovelace out of what I already have.
Be careful using @Mister_Slowhand’s method, it will trigger more than once if the temperature rises. You can combine his trigger into the sensor template to avoid that. Or use a condition to check and see if you’re already charging.
Yes, if I go that route there will be some “protection” for multiple triggers.
But right now I need to tackle the datetime input. It is definitely not user friendly, at least not on a mobile device. Unless there is a way, in Lovelace, to make it use the mobile native controls for date/time/number input, aka. a “spinner”?
Yes, if the temperature raises more than 2°/mn there would be several calls. Is this something possible ? (I guess it could)
If so, is there a problem to turn on your switch several times ? I have automations, for instance to turn the heater off, that can run on several conditions : window open, people leaving home, temperature increase etc etc… So I call the climate.turn_off even if its already off. It’s not a big deal. As long as you have a discrete on/off, not only a toggle action, this is fine.
If it’s a problem to turn on several times, you can prevent this by adding a condition on the current status.
And if you don’t have the status of your switch available, you can use the last_triggered attribute to ensure it won’t run twice a day.
Or last option, you set a “lock” input_boolean at first start every day, and unset it at 8:00. (I have that for my alarm clock : any modification to the time locks the clock, so it prevents setting the default hour if a manual modification has been done, and at the alarm time, I unset the lock)
Hi. Nice solution! I started implementing mines based on @petro suggestions.
Basically what I need is to turn on car heater electric switch depending on outside temperature. The colder temperature - earlier car heater should start.
Currently it looks like following:
Code in this section
binary_sensor:
- platform: template
sensors:
start_car_heat:
friendly_name: Car Heating flag
value_template: >
{% set temperature = states('sensor.yr_temperature') | float %}
{% set time_now = states('sensor.time') %}
{% set departure_time = (7*60*60) + (0*60) %} {# 07:00 #}
{% set increment = 60*60 %} {# Decrease time start by one hour every temperature period below (time is in seconds) #}
{% if temperature > 5.5 %}
{% set multiply = 0 %}
{% elif 5.5 >= temperature > -5 %}
{% set multiply = 1 %}
{% elif -5 >= temperature > -10 %}
{% set multiply = 2 %}
{% elif -10 >= temperature > -15 %}
{% set multiply = 3 %}
{% else %}
{% set multiply = 4 %}
{% endif %}
{% if multiply == 0 %}
{{ False }}
{% else %}
{{ (departure_time-increment*multiply) | timestamp_custom('%H:%M', False) == time_now }}
{% endif %}
tl; dr version of timings and temperature:
Leave at 07:00.
(… , 5.5) no trigger at all
[5.5, -5) trigger at 06:00
[-5, -10) trigger at 05:00
[-10, -15) trigger at 04:00
[-15, …) trigger at 03:00
What I don’t like is that possibility that it won’t be triggered.
Example:
At 04:00 we are having -9.9 degrees (no trigger)
At 05:00 we are having -10.1 degrees (again no trigger)
Am I right, or missing something?
Additional question: how often this binary_sensor logic is being executed?
Nope, it will always trigger. the minimum time is 1 hour.
The template updates once per minute. If the temperature is greater than -5 degrees, the charge time is an hour. Between -5 and -10, it will be 1 hour 15 minutes. For each 5 degrees below -10, it will add a half hour to the charge time.
There is never a day in which it will not trigger. All temperature ranges are covered.
I should clarify, there is a chance of no-triggers. That is if the temperature drops between charge times. I.E. Your charge time is set to fire in 5 minutes but he temperature drops and causes the template to change to 10 minutes in the past.
should be {{ (departure_time-increment*multiply) <= ts_now <= departure_time }}
I am also wondering if this would not overload RPi running every minute 24x7. There are some heavier string split operations and etc. I think I will implement additional check to check if this is “expected car heating period”.
It might. Not sure how you can make a sensor that updates every 15 minutes though. If you have any sensor that updates in a period of 15 minutes, you can remove the references to sensor.date_time and sensor.time and use now(). Just make sure you attach the 15 minute update sensor to the template using the entity_id field.
You can’t compare strings like that. greater than or less than does not work on strings the way you think it does. That’s why we have to convert them to timestamps. For example 9 > 10 as strings.
Yep I know that. But time strings in time format without /am should be good afaik. The thing that there,that I didn’t know how to convert them to stamps
