Triggered automation - testing conditions manually; different actions for different numeric values of same entity

Configuration
1

hi
I’m writing my first automation. I have two problems:

first problem

trigger:
  - platform: time
    at: 00:30
  condition:
  - condition: numeric_state
    entity_id: sensor.solar_forecast_today
    below: '5'
  action:
<not had any issues here>

I want to test that the condition logic does the right thing. I beat my head against this one for two days because the action would always fire no matter what the condition, then I found deep in this forum in a couple of postings, that a manually triggered automation ignores all conditions :frowning: I did rtfm in depth but did not find it.
so how do you workaround this - how do you test that a condition evaluates the way that you want it to, without waiting for the trigger event?

second problem:
can you build in one automation a more sophisticated logic that takes same action with different value based on different conditions? it would seem ugly to have to write this as 3 separate automations triggering a few mins apart?

i.e.

numericstate_of_entity above A below B do action1 with value X
numericstate_of_entity above B below C do action1 with value Y
numericstate_of_entity above C below D do action1 with value Z
etc

X, Y, Z will be hardcoded values
thanks
Ian

2

Service automation.trigger

This service will trigger the action of an automation. By default it bypasses any conditions, though that can be changed via the skip_condition attribute.

Use the automation trigger service in Developer Tools Services Open your Home Assistant instance and show your service developer tools. and make sure you set the skip_conditions option to false.

Yes you can. Use the choose: action. Script Syntax - Home Assistant

1 Like
3

I think this has been nicely clarified in the latest versions, rather than “trigger” it now says “run actions”
It would be nice to have a button that says “test conditions” and a tick appears next to each condition that is true

2 Likes
4

For the second problem you can use choose action type where actions can be done according to different condition.

action:
  - choose:
      - conditions:
          - condition: numeric_state
            entity_id: sensor.temperature_sensor_1
            above: '20'
            below: '25'
        sequence:
          - service: 'switch.turn_on'
            data: {}
      - conditions:
          - condition: numeric_state
            entity_id: sensor.temperature_sensor_1
            above: '25'
            below: '30'
        sequence:
          - service: 'switch.turn_on'
            data: {}
    default: []

This is the simplest way, an advanced way would be to use templates inside service data like this.

5

thanks all for the help, I have this working now