I have this as a trigger:
The automation has a condition to start at sunset. I’m debugging why it’s not doing the action (which is to turn a room heater on) when the automation starts.
I wonder if it’s because the numeric state value is already true (below 74) when the automation begins?
Correct.
It will trigger when the temperature decreases from above 74 to below 74. In other words, 74 is a threshold and the trigger occurs when the temperature crosses the threshold.
After the temperature crosses the threshold, the trigger is ‘set’ and will not trigger again (if the temperature continues to decrease, it won’t keep triggering the automation). To ‘reset’ it, the temperature must first rise above the threshold of 74. Alternatively, if you restart Home Assistant, that will ‘reset’ the Numeric State Trigger.
There’s another way to achieve your goal but it requires a bit more complexity. Use a State Trigger to monitor the kids room temperature. That will trigger for any temperature change. Then add a Numeric State Condition that checks if the temperature is below 74. It’s virtually identical to the Numeric State Trigger you have created, except it’s a condition and so it doesn’t have the ‘set/reset’ behavior I described. For good measure, add a second condition, a State Condition, that checks if the heater is currently off (there’s no point in turning on the heater if it’s already on).
Alternatively, consider using the Generic Thermostat integration which takes care of turning the heater on/off based on a desired setpoint temperature (and is rendered as a thermostat in the Lovelace UI).
Thanks so much. Exactly the info I needed.
Had no idea about the generic thermostat. That’s what would be best!
