I’ll order a couple - thanks for your help!
Oh, I forgot. If you want an instant reaction from the button, you just need to connect it to USB. If the button is powered via USB (not battery), it always tries to connect to the Wifi set up. There you will have an instant reaction.
That would make sense, if you have a power outlet in your car, that switches off, while the car is not running. As long as you drive the car, the button is powered (so searches for your Wifi), but if you switch off the car, it won’t drain your car battery but still works.
The button is only programmable while connected to a USB power. 
Honestly, this thing is made for your use case. 
EDIT:
sensor:
- platform: mqtt
name: "Shelly Button1 Battery"
state_topic: "shellies/shellybutton1/sensor/battery"
unit_of_measurement: "%"
icon: mdi:battery
- platform: mqtt
name: "Shelly Button1 Error"
state_topic: "shellies/shellybutton1/sensor/error"
icon: mdi:battery
binary_sensor:
- platform: mqtt
name: "Shelly Button1 Kitchen Charger"
state_topic: "shellies/shellybutton1/sensor/charger"
value_template: "{{ value }}"
automation:
- id: Shelly Button1
alias: Shelly Button1
trigger:
platform: mqtt
topic: "shellies/shellybutton1/input_event/0"
action:
- choose:
- conditions:
- condition: template
value_template: "{{ trigger.payload_json.event == 'S' }}"
sequence:
- service: input_boolean.turn_on
entity_id: input_boolean.all_lights_or_anything
- conditions:
- condition: template
value_template: "{{ trigger.payload_json.event == 'SS' }}"
sequence:
- delay: '00:00:01'
- conditions:
- condition: template
value_template: "{{ trigger.payload_json.event == 'SSS' }}"
sequence:
- delay: '00:00:01'
- conditions:
- condition: template
value_template: "{{ trigger.payload_json.event == 'L' }}"
sequence:
- delay: '00:00:01'
1 Like
Maybe I’m a bit late to the party, but I tend to have this passion for nfc tags. I always have my phone with me. Got an NFC tag hidden away nicely in my car. And when I reach my phone there, it triggers anything I program it to.
In this case I could make it to so do a REST API command to Home Assistant to open or close the garage door (respectively of current status, so toggle maybe).
Your phone is always connected to HA (either wifi or cellular network) if your instance is also accessable outside LAN. Also less likely to be copied. RF can be easily copied. Not to mention, this is also the cheapest and simplest solution. You can buy 10 nfc tags for less than 10 bucks
That’s a great idea too. Any tips on which NFC to buy? Are there good and bad NFC tags?
Not particularly any good or bad. These are the ones I got. Nfc tags as a sticker. Amazing
I’m not sure why a button is better?
What other kind of actions do you want to accomplish when you push the button?
I use a Lutron Pico remote (Home/Away marked) for an in-car activation device, though I am using mine to close the garage doors and set the alarm, you can tie it to any automation you want. If you already have Caseta devices, but not the bridge, that is the next step, and you can make the remotes do whatever you want.
Response time is measured in milliseconds and the range is dependent on the bridge placement, but I can arm the alarm from well over 50 feet down the road
Because it is illegal to use your phone while driving?
1 Like
Who said anything about using the phone while driving? 
Even if I had suggested to use the phone as a control button (which I didn’t) the OP could still stop and push a button on the phone. Still not using the phone while driving either.
What I was asking was to see why they didn’t think the phone was as good as a button. I was asking to find out what their thought process was in that regard.
If they thought the phone could only be used as a button I would have next pointed out that if the phone is already connected to HA the OP could use the phone’s location to do things without the need of explicitly pushing button on the phone.
Which is also why I asked what other things the OP wanted to do with the button push. Because those other things might have likely been able to be accomplished using the phone location as well.
I have my garage door open automatically for me every time I come home and I never have to pull my phone out to do it.
The first post deals with the other things he wants done.
Personally I find the phone difficult to use from the car, especially in the drivers seat.
He says he wants a button, give the man a button.
But yes some automation could be applied if you have good presence detection. However that is not a given, even with the phone app.
My own house is between two roads and you have to drive on road 1 past the house to turn down road 2 where the entrance is. But most presence detection would get triggered from the road 1. Then the garage would open, even if I am not going straight home. Maybe I am going on down road 1 to go to the pub, and I come home some hours later to an unlocked house and open garage door.
Can’t you use a polygon shape to trigger the garage and doors that does not include road 1?
Or does that not give the garage enough time to open then?
I saw that but I didn’t know if there were other “more thingS” (notice the ‘s’) besides the one thing (notice no ‘s’) that they mentioned. 
Or maybe he didn’t realize other options were available? Never hurts to suggest other things.
I have that handled by having another automation that closes the door if I’m going away from the house (>1000 ft from home and direction of travel is “away”). That also helps if I leave and forget to close the garage door too (which was the original intent of the automation).
I very rarely have any problems with those two automations running correctly using my phone app and Life360 for location sensing.
But if the OP isn’t interested then that’s OK too. But I figured I’d throw it out there just in case.
Use google assistant to start a routine? I have a button on my steering wheel to start the voice assistant.
1 Like
Funny enough, I read an article at CNN, why we have so many buttons in our world. 
Buttons give us back control. Even if a button is totally useless, it makes you feel like you could gain back control over what is happening. For example the “close the door” button in elevators. They mostly don’t do anything, the door would close either way, but if you can push that button, it gives you the feeling, to control the situation.
Coming back to your point, I for one would like to control exactly, when my garage opens. I wouldn’t want to guess, if my phone automatically had opened the door. That’s why I (but that is just me) would never use any kind of automation to open doors. I want to control when and why this happens.
EDIT: found it, it’s an interesting read: https://edition.cnn.com/style/article/placebo-buttons-design/index.html
1 Like
I get what you are saying…to a degree.
But we are in a home automation forum. That’s the purpose of home automation…to actually automate stuff. Otherwise we could just push buttons and make stuff work. But then it wouldn’t be “home automation”. It would be “home push-a-button”.
As far as buttons that don’t work on purpose…
It sounds kind of a little manipulative to me.
If I need to be tricked into thinking I have some more control over my life then I have even less control than I actually had before they gave me a non-functioning button in the first place because now I’m not only not in control of the thing I thought I had control over but now I don’t even have any control over the thoughts that I had about being in control of that thing. 
The way I see it is that I DO have control over my things because I’m the one who sets the rules over when those automated things happen. I don’t need a fake button. 
2 Likes
Totally with you, just for that one point. I really couldn’t get myself to automate doors like garage doors or even better front doors. 
Uh, I couldn’t sleep, especially with the garage door. 
Everything else, but not the doors
1 Like
Luckily my garage is detached so I’m less concerned for that door to inadvertently open.
I haven’t gone to smart locks yet. But that’s more of a WAF than myself, tho.
You could also have alerts send out when the garage is opened. Here it is announced over all the speakers.
If HA knows you are asleep, you can make use of it in the conditions of your automation. Maybe you can sleep better that way -)
I have that as well.
If the door is opened for more than 30 minutes I get a pushbullet alert and another one every 30 minutes until it’s closed.
And if the door is still open at around bedtime I get an announcement throughout the house to remind me it’s open.
Same here. And when I go to bed the fence and garage door are closed.
I’ve wrapped my garage door and electric fence in a template cover. That cover checks an input_boolean to see if I disabled the action (e.g. when somebody is working in the driveway, I don’t want my electric fence to close )