That was fun, how did I miss that one!
itâs never too late!
I read the OP, Tomâs answer/solution and missed everything after that as well. 
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I fail at this so often.
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Great initiative.
I donât want to edit before getting more opinions: I actually think videos should be avoided as much as possible. Iâm not saying thereâs no value in them, but there are very few good quality videos that will stand the test of time. I suppose itâs true for written content too, but that is easier to edit or comment on.
Iâm not saying complete avoidance, but rather to state the implications of posting a video.
Iâll sit down later and draft a point. On mobile and just quickly responding.
BTW, thatâs another disclaimer I often use. Sometimes I try to give quick help with a pointer or two, while I am able to write a more complete answer, but since Iâm on mobile at the time, it woild be too tedious.
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I was wondering how come you were so quiet on a post like that
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Had the same argument this weekend with someone who kept complaining that there wasnât a video for whatever they were attempting.
Explained to them the unmaintainablity of video guides and pointed them to an excellent written step by step as well as a thread for troubleshooting.
Well, they still got it wrong & twisted the fact that the thread had 700 replies was because there was no video guide. That was my cue to walk away.
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Asleep at the wheelâŚ
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I ones saw a respond from an OP, which maybe felt âinsulted/misunderstoodâ
Canât remember it wordly, or in which Topic, but was something like.
âHey, Maybe you should think about the generation who grew up with (A click on a button, to install an App from Google Playâ ) and then 2-3 click to create an Automation in that App) , And now with HA, I have to install maybe 3 different Apps( I think he mend, HA +Integrations +Cards(etc) and writing code, to accomplice the same, itâs complicated ! )
I do somehow âfeel pityâ for those generations, one of my last assignments was as âteacherâ in a IT-Gymnasium ( 15 years ago )( Private such, where prime goal was to satisfy stockholders and ( public assigner/Goverment) ( So approval of students and easy (cheap and basic level) education materials, was one of their prime priorities, to fulfill the ârequirementsâ for their âBusinessâ ! )
In short, If a person had i.e Gaming experience and knows howto replace a Ram and/or a Graphic card ( handling a screwdriver )( And know howto install an App ) , they were considered having the competence as qualified ( and considered them self as such ) âŚ
I know i do , from time to time forget ( or being mislead ) into a state where i assume, people have âdone their homeworkâ , or they give the impression that they know/done more than they actually do/have, so i assume they have done( in my opinion ) the most basic i.e troubleshooting steps.
Lately im trying to not âexpectâ that some people in fact havenât done anything before they open a Topic, or they pick the first and best Post in a search, to post a question
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I donât know about everyone else, but when I started out with HA I found the documents to be pretty difficult to use. They tend to run on the principle that you already know things like structure, syntax and naming conventions, and a lot of them arenât self contained, meaning that they can tell you things like states and triggers, but not provide you with the information that you need to put them into practice.
Likewise, with existing threads, new users read them but donât really understand how to put what is in them into practice in their specific circumstances. Iâve gone through a few troubleshooting threads and found that people are suggesting doing things, but arenât giving any clues on how to do them. So itâs often easier and simpler to ask a new question and then get an answer thatâs specific to you.
Iâve also found that quite a few threads contain multiple variations on the same code, someone asks something, someone puts in some code to do that thing, and someone else puts in a slightly improved version, or a version that does something slightly different. When youâre a new user thatâs a little overwhelming, especially if the thread refers to something thatâs been changed since the thread started.
Iâve come across several threads giving instructions that are no longer current, so the way of doing something is different, or where my screen no longer looks like the screenshots.
This is supposed to be a community resource, and I donât think that itâs really reasonable to expect everyone to engage with it in the way that we want. If someone asks the same question as someone else just pass it by, leave it for someone else to answer if you donât want to do it.
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No one here is expecting beginners to pick up this information instantly. This is a forum where you seek help from more experienced users. Thereâs also no rule for asking the same question. People here are just venting, they are allowed to vent. Just like youâre aloud to ask the same question thatâs been asked a thousand times. As long as everyone is nice to each other, then all is well. The code of conduct explicitly informs users what is right or wrong on the forums. The FAQ is a loose guide meant to guide people into asking good questions so they receive good responses.
I think one of our (and I include us all here) bigger issues with starting out, is we just dive in and have a look get stuck then search for the answer on whatever medium we choose.
The best thing for all would be to read the docs about getting started which do go through the naming and concepts stuff, but how many of us have read them?
So how do we encourage people to read these docs before asking questions?
I for one over the last few years of using HA have learnt to start by reading the docs then progressing to other forms of information. I certainly did not start out that way.
The other issue is there are often many ways to solve a problem, all work and will solve the problem. How do we choose the correct answer for each user. We canât.
The whole reason HA exists is to enable all smart home ecosystems to work together on a local level, this is always going to provide many ways to achieve the goal.
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WowâŚalmost missed it âŚthat was a good laughâŚ
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Rather ironically, what we have in this case is the inverse, people posting the exact same answers over and over again when once would have done.
If somebody has said something, and itâs been acknowledge, repeating it is a little undignified.
In this case, the answer happened to be wrong. Scripts cannot use state calls to determine the trigger ID a parented automation. So anyone who comes across this question in the future will be mislead.
And in case anyone is wondering, in this particular instance, I simply had an action that needed to be called from several different places, so rather than copying and pasting the same code over and over again into different automations, I split it off into itâs own object and called it when needed, so that I would only need to change it in one place if an update was made.
For reasons that I donât really understand, putting it as an automation rather than a script seems to have upset you.
True - and they have improved enormously over the last year or so.
There is a reasonably clear thread to follow for someone starting out. Maybe we should all do more to flag up the starting point, which is, I suppose:
Although something a bit more eyecatching might be good, like the Green/Yellow start pages.
Speaking as someone who is new to HA, I think that a good place to start might be to separate out the technical documentation that details âwhatâ the different components of HA can do, from the documents that explain to new users âhowâ to do things.
I remember trying to implement a specific notification feature that seemed to need about 5 lines of code according to the documentation, but the documentation telling me what the code was didnât tell me where I needed to put it, and the documentation telling me where I needed to put it didnât tell me how to edit that location, and the documentation telling me how to edit that location didnât tell me how to actually open the editor.
In the end I had to find a youtube video where someone who spoke my native language did a walkthrough.
With all due respect. You brought that on yourself. You were given an explicit answer multiple times and you refused (and are still refusing) to accept the answer. You even went as far as claiming that no one explicitly told you âitâs not possible to pass contextâ when multiple people did.
Yes they can. This is automatically passed via context without the user doing anything. I explained this in my post. The proper way to have the âcontext chainâ work in automations and scripts is to have automations call scripts. Not use a automation.trigger to trigger a separate automation.
Thatâs exactly what scripts are for.
Itâs not this. Itâs the fact that youâre belligerently denying that it will work. When in fact it does work. I have more scripts than I have automations simply doing what youâre trying to do. Iâm trying to help you in the other thread, but youâre here arguing instead of fixing your problem.
Please, I am begging you. In the other thread, post a few automations that are triggering another automation. I will help you get exactly what youâre looking for without extra global variables, without any overhead, without any unstable issues, all using scripts instead of automation.trigger.
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With all due respect, I think that most of the documentation is still a couple of levels of complexity above what is required to encourage more people to read it.
*If you use Home Assistant Container, you can find `configuration.yaml` in the config folder that you mounted in your container.*
*If you use Home Assistant Operating System, you can find `configuration.yaml` in the `/config` folder of the installation.*
*If you use Home Assistant Core, you can find `configuration.yaml` in the config folder passed to the `hass` command (default is `~/.homeassistant`).*
For most new users this one section might as well be written in a foreign language. All of the information that you need IS included on other documents, but to fully understand this you need to have read and understood at least 5 other documents.
If reading through documentation is your thing then this is OK, but for your average new user itâs far easier to just go to the forum and ask someone why you keep getting a specific error message.
Iâve found myself trying to do things and finding that the documents presume that Iâve read other documents that I didnât know existed.
I have to agree some of the documentation does assume you know everything about everything. But if you read from the start of the docs to end it will be quite straightforward. Just none of us are going to do that are we? So if we could find a way of creating documentation for a very complex system that covered every scenario in every page it may end up being a bit difficult to find you way around, some kind of compromise is needed. But what i donât know.
The problem is that I did listen. I took in what people had said, and I explicitly said that this was something that I could do in the future but wasnât in a place where I could do it right now.
I think that maybe you should ask yourself, whether raising that thread in this completely unrelated thread is in any way helpful to the OP, or to anyone in this thread.
If I were to post links about a thread that you raised in every other thread that you commented on, I think that maybe youâd consider this harassment.
Yes they can. This is automatically passed via context without the user doing anything . I explained this in my post. The proper way to have the âcontext chainâ work in automations and scripts is to have automations call scripts. Not use a automation.trigger to trigger a separate automation.
Iâd turned the notifications off by then.
Thatâs exactly what scripts are for.
Which I didnât know when I started, and which Iâm apparently being stalked across multiple threads by people such as yourself for simply saying that changing this was on my radar but not a priority right now.
I said it multiple times, Iâve put a pin in it for later.
Itâs the fact that youâre belligerently denying that it will work.
Iâm really not sure where youâre getting that from. If you go back to the original thread I said multiple times that I wasnât in a position to actually do it at the time.
Iâm trying to help you in the other thread, but youâre here arguing instead of fixing your problem.
Youâre posting links to thread where you were arguing with me on completely unrelated threads. This isnât helping.
So, Iâm asking you, please do not follow me around and post links to my old threads wherever I go. You could have posted this to the original thread, what purpose does posting it to a thread on documentation have other than to harass me.