Understanding Script & Automation --> e.g. home presense simulation

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Hello there,

I am pretty new to this forum and also relatively new to HomeAssistant.

Right now I am running a test system to try things out. I only have a few Shellys connected to HA.

As a practical application I want to make a home-presense simulation.

So shut on an of the light and open and close some window covers (raffstore).

Right now I have a, propably trivial, issue to get it all running.

I have created a script that that checks for the sunrise and sunset and does a random switching on the light shelly for example.

The problem is, that the script only runs once. So each day I have to restart the script.

then I have tried to make an automation to trigger the “script”. Somehow, this also doesn’t work.

I have tried several combinations of where to put the condition (after sunset & before sunrise) and also how to trigger the complete presense-simuation (vacation mode = on/off).

My questions:
What is the correct way to do this?
Do I only need one script, or several? (for several entities)
Do I need automations at all?

I know that there are several solutions out there, but I want to build my own solution as I want to learn the (correct!) process.

thank you for your comments.

Objects I have created:

  • A helper switch (vacation mode)
  • A script (random_raffstore_1) → see below
  • A automation (

Script:

alias: random_raffstore_1
sequence:
  - repeat:
      count: "999999"
      sequence:
        - device_id: 8fd2857bee9352e8ce8bbe02c774d217
          domain: cover
          entity_id: c65dcbe8dce926f03e42377621a99e1c
          type: open
        - delay:
            hours: 0
            minutes: "{{ range(20, 150)|random|int }}"
            seconds: 0
            milliseconds: 0
        - device_id: 8fd2857bee9352e8ce8bbe02c774d217
          domain: cover
          entity_id: c65dcbe8dce926f03e42377621a99e1c
          type: close
        - delay:
            hours: 0
            minutes: "{{ range(20, 150)|random|int }}"
            seconds: 0
            milliseconds: 0
mode: restart

Automation:

alias: Call_Raffstore_Script
description: ""
trigger: []
condition:
  - condition: sun
    before: sunset
    after: sunrise
action:
  - service: script.random_raffstore_1
    data: {}
mode: single
2

That’s not an automation if it doesn’t have a trigger. An automation has three parts:

  • Trigger: the thing happening that starts it off
  • Conditions: a list of things to check before allowing it to continue
  • Action: effectively a script of things to do.

Work out when you want your script to run and put that in the trigger.

So perhaps:

  • trigger on sunrise
  • check for vacation mode
  • run the script
trigger:
  - platform: sun
    event: sunrise
condition:
  - condition: state
    entity_id: input_boolean.VACATION_SWITCH_ID
    state: 'on'
action:
  - service: script.random_raffstore_1
    data: {}