WTH why can't I change the state of an entity without trigger the action

Month of "What the heck?!"
1

For some entities it is useful to be able to set there state without triggering the actions, it would be good to be able to change their state through an automation where they can change without Home Assisstant detecting them for example:

  • Overlapping groups of blinds, triggering All Blinds to close, I want the group Lounge Blinds and Kitchen Blinds group to close.
  • Remote control of AV equipment where people can change the state of devices without an event Home Assistant sees
2

You can mask triggers by using conditions.

3

Don’t forget to vote for your own WTH…

And could you please elaborate a bit more. I’m not sure I understand what is the issue you are talking about.

1 Like
4

Here is a more specific example.

I have Cover groups setup for my blinds:

  • All Blinds
  • Lounge Blinds

When I close the All Blinds group to close all blinds the Lounge Blinds group shows as open. I would like to be able to set the Lounge Blinds group state to Closed without trigger the close action.

5

So you want to set the state of the lounge blinds group to closed even though they are open?

Why?

That would be confusing at best, misleading at worst.

How will you ever know the real state of the blinds?

That option is highly unlikely to ever be added to Home Assistant.

I think the real issue is why does this happen:

Are the lounge blinds not part of the all blinds group?

Is there an issue with the integration you are using to control the blinds?

6

I checked and I incorrectly stated it was Cover Groups it is not it is Template Covers so they are not linked to the covers. The template covers use logic to detrmine what blinds to open or close this may result in a change of state to other template covers. I checked the documentation and I have found a way of manging this but is would be easier just to directly change the state of the template cover without triggering the action.

This applies to situations where the state of something can be changed externally outisde of HASS but there is no event. In the AV example if someone changes the source on the reciever this does not cause an event but may be detected later by polling which I can use to make the state in HASS consistent but I don’t want to trigger the action.

7

In that case you need to use a condition to prevent the trigger.

Search for “context id”.

8

I have the need as well,

Using hdmi cec integration i can see state of my dumb tv, for reasons beyond my unerstanding state is geeting stuck from time to time, therefore i introduced a boolean sensor to keep pinging tv ip and report “real” state and fix it if its wrong.

This all works, however changing state also triggers action.

And no i cannot use this boolean sensor as part of template switch, because its much slower than hdmi cec, therefore:

WTH i cannot change switch state without action?

9

Because (as I keep saying) you have not designed your conditions correctly.

Use the context_id to tell if your trigger is valid.