Zone automation and Pushbullet notifications

Configuration
1

Hi,

I’m new to Home Assistant and am trying to experiment with presence detection, automation and notifications. Basically I’ve set up Pushbullet on my iPhone, presence detection (with OwnTracks and CloudMQTT) and zones. I would like to get a notification when I leave or enter a zone, for instance the Home zone.

Each of these things are working individually. If I test PushBullet notifications from HASS they go to my iPhone. And the map shows my location and whether I am home, at work or away. But I am not getting notifications when I leave or enter my home zone. Also, if I manually trigger the automation from the from the HASS page the notification goes through to my phone.

I’m sure it’s probably something I missed with my automation but I can’t figure out what.

My zones.yaml:

  • name: Home
    latitude: ****
    longitude: ****
    adius: 10

  • name: Work
    latitude: ***
    longitude: ***
    radius: 100

My automations.yaml:

- alias: NotifyWhenHome
  trigger:
    platform: zone
    entity_id: device_tracker.my_iphone
    zone: zone.Home
    # Event is either enter or leave
    event: enter
    action:
      service: notify.iphone_pushbullet
      data_template:
        title: "Lucy, I'm home!"
        message: "Is this thing on?"

- alias: NotifyWhenLeave
  trigger:
    platform: zone
    entity_id: device_tracker.iphone_iphone
    zone: zone.Home
    # Event is either enter or leave
    event: leave
    action:
      service: notify.iphone_pushbullet
      data_template:
        title: "I'm outta here!"
        message: "I'll be surprised if this works!"

Can anyone tell me what I’m doing wrong?

Thanks!

2

Well I hope that is not the real info provided, since it shows the your house and your work.

Try changng the radius, the gps is not accurate enough and will show in and out of the radius, plus take into account the yard, laneway, sidewalk. Tracking device joining your home network is probably easier and no battery drain. Used ddwrt to track the device joining the network.

3

In addition to what Hick Hackers suggested change “zone.Home” to “zone.home”.

I was notified recently that HomeAssistant is sensitive to the case of entities.

Can you see if the automation was ever triggered (listed in the states page)? It may be triggering but your notification isn’t working or the other way around.

also, click the pencil in the lower right of your post to edit your post. Then highlight your config text and click the < / > symbol above your post. This will make the forum maintain the formatting of your config so we can see if there are any spacing/indent errors.

4

@HickHackerz:

Woops, Rookie mistake. Was multitasking when I posted. Redacted.

I will try using my network join as a test to see if it works that way. However the only way I’ll be able to to leave automations for work will be with zones.

@silvrr:

I originally had it as “zone.home” and it didn’t work either. I then realized my zone was actually defined as “zone.Home” so I changed it to a capital H on the chance that it was case sensitive but still no joy.

I don’t see anything indicating that the automation triggered. I can see my device transition from home to away and back to home but no automations are firing.

5

try moving the action to be in line with trigger. You will need to move everything under action over also to maintain the formatting.

See an example below from my config text.

  - alias: "Turn Off When Home"
    trigger:
      platform: zone
      entity_id: device_tracker.iphone
      zone: zone.home
      event: enter
    action:
      service: homeassistant.turn_off
      entity_id: group.away_automations

Also change “data_template” to just “data”

edit: Its easier to show you rather than type it all out. The component page show spacing as follows, its also what I use and have working.

action:
  service: notify.iphone_pushbullet
  data:
    title: "I'm outta here!"
    message: "I'll be surprised if this works!"
6

Actually I miss formatted it on the post. The action: is inline with trigger in my config:

- alias: NotifyWhenHome
  trigger:
    platform: zone
    entity_id: device_tracker.iphone
    zone: zone.Home
    # Event is either enter or leave
    event: enter  # or "leave"
  action:
    service: notify.my_pushbullet
    data_template:
      title: "Lucy, I'm home!"
      message: "I'll be surprised if this works!"

- alias: NotifyWhenLeave
  trigger:
    platform: zone
    entity_id: device_tracker.iphone
    zone: zone.Home
    # Event is either enter or leave
    event: leave  # or "leave"
  action:
    service: notify.my_pushbullet
    data_template:
      title: "I'm outta here!"
      message: "I'll be surprised if this works!"

- alias: NotifyWhenLeaveWork
  trigger:
    platform: zone
    entity_id: device_tracker.iphone
    zone: zone.Work
    # Event is either enter or leave
    event: leave  # or "leave"
  action:
    service: notify.my_pushbullet
    data_template:
      title: "Leaving work!"
      message: "I'll be surprised if this works!"

Will try changing “data_template” to “data” as you suggested.

Thanks!

7

So next battle: I can’t find an example of what I need to change in my automation for a trigger based on network connectivity. I’m using the Ubiquity component as that is what I have at home.

I have it successfully detecting if I’m home or away based on being connected but what do I change the trigger to in the automation.yaml? Right now it’s zone: but I need to use something else now that I’m using network detection I assume?

8

so is the zone notification working now?

if you have your wifi connected devices showing up in the states tab you can trigger off of the states.

automation:
  trigger:
    platform: state
    entity_id: device_tracker.ubiquity_iphone
    from: 'not_home'
    to: 'home'
9

Well it’s sort of working!

My home to not_home trigger is working but is very slow to react. It takes about fifteen minutes for HASS to tell that my device is away at which point it triggers the automation. So that’s some progress at least. I just have to see if I can get to be quicker. I’ll look at the Ubiquiti tracker to see if there is anything I can do to speed it up.

I just noticed a syntax error in my not_home to home automation so we’ll see if that works now that I’ve fixed it.

10

Ok, both triggers are working but not very timely. Takes about fifteen minutes after I’ve left or arrived before HASS detects I’ve left or arrived even though my phone joins or leaves the network much faster than that.

I’ve added an interval_seconds value of 60 but that hasn’t sped things up. No thanks sure if that even applies to the Ubiquiti.

11

So trying to get my first automation based on leaving a zone and seem to have the issue as @TheFourDees even though I am using iOS notifiations vs Pushbullet.

I have the following setup:

zone.yaml

- name: home
  latitude: ##.######
  longitude: -##.######
  elevation: 94.8
  radius: 200
  icon: "mdi:home"

leavehome.yaml

alias: 'Home Presence Notifications'
trigger:
  platform: zone
  entity_id: device_tracker.chris
  zone: zone.home
  event: enter
action:
  service: notify.ios_chris_iphone
  data:
    title: "Presence Event"
    message: "Chris has arrived left home."
    data:
      subtitle: "Home Location"

I have tested seperatedly the notify_ios service and it works. I also can see in the device updating (in mosquitto and in the HA frontend) to home. The frontend log shows “Chris is at home” change but the Automation for the zone.home does not seem to trigger and it doesn’t show up.

I been searching the forum and docs pages for hours and can’t seem to find the problem. Any ideas?