🌐 Zone Notification Extended

[Ltek]

@panhans one Feature Request

Would be great to have the BP write a human readable log into an Entity for each separate Person? (which can be done today but requires the user to create a trigger template for each in the config yaml)

[Ltek]

has anyone added the ability to this BP to make notifications Persistent or Sticky?

[Herman-Karin (Herman)]

Hi Hans.
Thanks for your blueprint, as said on Ko-fi:-).
I set it up to get a notification, when leaving or entering my home zone, so that I don’t forget to turn on/off the alarm.
This morning my wife left for work, and I got a notification. Whereas I nowhere use her person entity in the automation. Any idea where it goes wrong?
This is the yaml code (my name is Herman, my wife’s name is Karin):

alias: Alarm aan- of uitzetten
description: ""
use_blueprint:
  path: panhans/zone_notification_extended.yaml
  input:
    persons:
      - person.herman
    zones:
      - zone.home
    zones_leaving: []
    duration:
      hours: 0
      minutes: 0
      seconds: 2
    notify_device: 06ddd379fb0294b515746ffa1af97d44
    title_arriving: Alarm uitzetten
    title_leaving: Alarm aanzetten
    critical_notification: false
    message_arriving: We zijn terug thuis!
    message_leaving: We zijn vertrokken!

Thank you.
Herman (Belgium)

[panhans]

Hey, thanks for your support and for your feedback.

The blueprint / automation uses exactly one trigger:

trigger:
  platform: state
  entity_id: !input persons
  for: !input duration

Did you got a notification with the name of your wife? Are you sure there isn’t a 2nd automation based on this blueprint that triggered the notification?

Could you navigate to your blueprints, hit the three dots menu and click on Show automations using this blueprint.

[Herman-Karin (Herman)]

Yes, I got a notification with the name of my wife, confirming that my wife had left. While I only needed (through this automation) a notification when I myself am leaving/entering the home zone.
Please note the notification contained exactly the same text that I put in your bluepint automation:
Alarm aanzetten
We zijn vertrokken!
So the notification must have come from that automation.
(There were some other blueprints/automations, but they were all disabled. I deleted them now.)

[panhans]

Could you check if you have access to the trace log of this automation run?

Navigate to your automation, click on the three dots menu, click on show trace, select the run of the notification with the arrow buttons on top. Note only the last 5 runs are stored. Then download the trace log using the three dots menu again. You also can download the last 5 trace logs an share them with me, e.g by google drive ect.

[Herman-Karin (Herman)]

Trying to figure it all out, I tried the automation a few times - so the trace for this morning is no longer there. I’ll check later and come back to you. Thanks for helping out!

[Herman-Karin (Herman)]

Received three notifications, out of the blue. I was home all the time. (My wife is driving home, but not yet here.) I will download the traces (json files?). How do I share them?
(10 minutes later: notifications keep coming. My wife is still on the road:-).)

[panhans]

Upload them e.g. here https://rentry.co/, click go and share the link.

[Herman-Karin (Herman)]

I found out the issue: I had my wifes iPad in my person entity, next to my personal iPhone… So my personal state switched between home/away all the time.
However, I switched the automation off, since I do get a reminder, but only on screen → no sound. When in my car, i need the sound, of course. Tried everything, no luck. Thanks anyway.

[jprazzle]

This is a great blueprint and a core automationText for my home. Thank you for creating it!

It works perfectly for notifications, but I still get “template variable warning” flooding the logs. Any idea what this could be? (I saw a few comments in this thread addressing this issue, but it doesn’t seem to be applicable for my case unless I’m missing something).

[panhans]

Could you share a trace log of an automation run when this happen?

[Sir_Goodenough ((SG) WhatAreWeFixing.Today)]

Sharing a Debug Trace

The debug trace is one of the most useful sources of information you can provide when asking for help with automations or scripts that aren’t working the way you expect. It provides a complete copy of the automation’s configuration as well as details about what happened during a run of the automation. An automation’s traces can be accessed through the Automation Editor by clicking the “Traces” button at the top right: [Screenshot from 2025-02-26 19-18-13] The Traces menu allows you to naviga…

[jprazzle]

Sorry for the delay!
I think I figured it out…I had a script running in the “entering custom action” (that was brilliantly written by yours truly) that was throwing the error.

[Ltek]

@panhans excellent BP, thank you for sharing your work!

[Ltek]

anyone know how to insert the triggering person entity’s Last Changed Time Stamp, into the Notification?