Updating the Google Travel Time sensor manually?

Configuration
1

Hi,
Is there any way of updating the Google Travel Time sensor manually? I have adjusted the automatic update in the sensor to update every six hours not to exceed the free threshold. Now I am trying to find a way of updating the sensor manually on demand, or with automation. Linking to the Google Travel Time sensor to the ‘homeassistant.update_entity’ doesn’t seem to work. Does anyone have an idea how to achieve this?

2

homeassistant.update_entity should work, I use it.

3

Thanks, any idea how to get it to work with a Google Travel Time sensor to trigger manual updates?

4

At the most simplistic, you have an automation that’s triggered when the device tracker updates:

alias: 'person1 on the move'
trigger:
  - platform: state
    entity_id: device_tracker.person1_mobile
condition:
  - condition: template
    value_template "{{ not is_state('device_tracker.person1_mobile','home') }}"
action:
  - service: homeassistant.update_entity
    entity_id: sensor.person1s_time_to_home

That is massively simplified from how I do it. I use a separate script, and a proximity sensor, so that the frequency of updates is linked to the distance from home. The further away I am, the less it updates.

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6

I’ve tried using the homeassistant.update_entity as well but it doesn’t seem to be working. The automation runs as I also set a notification, but the travel time on my dashboard only seems to be updatet every 8 minutes or so.
I also tried setting the scan_interval in my sensors.yaml to 60 seconds for testing but that also doesn’t seem to work.

Any ideas?
Thanks!

EDIT: When keeping an eye on the API request amount I only see it increase 1 every 5-8 minutes or so. Manually calling homeassistant.update_entity > sensor.luck_travel_home_time will not increase the API request amount.

7

Hi - that sounds very interesting to me - would you share some details?
what did you set in the sensor as scan_interval?
I’ve set mine to 6000 currently to update not more than every 10 hours (when I’m at home)

Thanks
Albert

8

Everything of mine is on my GitHub. This comes together with an automation and a script. The script in this case updates different travel sensors (car, bus, foot, and waze).

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