I really like the direction homeassistant is going with the automations, I only realized the new possibilities recently and started moving over external automations/refactoring. The traces are extremely helpful and make me feel like i am just scratching the surface of what is possible. Also the newest release makes automations run independently from each other so they do not stop if you update any other automation. This proofs that the HA architecture is really investing in making their automation engine more powerful!
Looks good. The one thing that makes the UI look bad was if you had a light turn on in there. All the options being displayed make it difficult to read. Now with the summarised version it's much cleaner. I've been considering moving my separate automations into the UI. I was thinking you should just be able to copy text out of the file, then switch the UI to yaml mode and paste it in. Reformat for the indentation and save.
Do you add conditions, such as light has to be off for a set time before turning back on, to compensate for someone using a manual switch to turn off a light? If so, how do you handle that? I have a little issue that if the wall switch is used, often the motion sensor will override the wall switch, meaning if the switch is turned off on the wall, the light comes back on with the motion sensor. I was just wondering what you preferred way of handling that would be. :)
No, I do not have the issue. I want people to be able to use the wall switch. In fact, in the kitchen I have an automation that disables the automation that turns on and off the light with motion sensor when a wall switch is used to turn on the light (and enable the automation back when the light turns off). So if I want the light to stay on, I just use the wall switch. But in your scenario, the light would turn off when the motion sensor changes the state - and it does have a delay about a minute on its own. So if somebody turns the light off, it will stay off until the motion stops for about a minute and then starts again. That's fine I guess. But again, I could make it so that if wall switch is used, it will disable the automation if I needed that. The way I do that is, I have ESPHome in the switch, and I fire an event when the switch is toggled, and have an automation for that in HA. Or I could call a service to handle the automation directly from the switch.
So instead of having everything sorted and manageable you will end up with a gigantic unformatted yaml file :facepalm: I would never do this, I spent so much time organizing my ha config in neat packages, really will not trade it for some gui I wouldn't use anyway. HA is clearly regressing in its configuration. Next step will be probably deprecating yaml completely, which will render it unusable for me. Also I'm confident that complex automations almost always can be split into template binary sensors, timers and simple automations. Yes, there are a few edge cases, but they are very rare.
Aren't you missing the point. You don't need to look at the yaml file with the UI. If you do need it for some reason then you can switch to it in the UI. Things like that and auto complete make me never want to edit a text file again.
@@geejayem59 no I'm not :) Automations in yaml are like code. I can version control them, diff them, copy them, back up them. Automations in gui are like Windows registry, yes it works at this point time (maybe) but if it breaks - it's unfixable, it is not reusable, and not refactorable. The industry is moving towards infrastructure as code, like docker, kubernetes, terraform etc, but HA is moving in the opposite direction.
I really like the direction homeassistant is going with the automations, I only realized the new possibilities recently and started moving over external automations/refactoring. The traces are extremely helpful and make me feel like i am just scratching the surface of what is possible. Also the newest release makes automations run independently from each other so they do not stop if you update any other automation. This proofs that the HA architecture is really investing in making their automation engine more powerful!
You're teasing us with the 2022.9 release's compact automation UI.
I had no idea about the CTRL + / shortcut for commenting out a block of code, thank you!
Ooo cool
Finally we'll arrive to Node-Red ;)
Looks good. The one thing that makes the UI look bad was if you had a light turn on in there. All the options being displayed make it difficult to read. Now with the summarised version it's much cleaner. I've been considering moving my separate automations into the UI. I was thinking you should just be able to copy text out of the file, then switch the UI to yaml mode and paste it in. Reformat for the indentation and save.
Do you add conditions, such as light has to be off for a set time before turning back on, to compensate for someone using a manual switch to turn off a light? If so, how do you handle that?
I have a little issue that if the wall switch is used, often the motion sensor will override the wall switch, meaning if the switch is turned off on the wall, the light comes back on with the motion sensor. I was just wondering what you preferred way of handling that would be. :)
No, I do not have the issue. I want people to be able to use the wall switch. In fact, in the kitchen I have an automation that disables the automation that turns on and off the light with motion sensor when a wall switch is used to turn on the light (and enable the automation back when the light turns off). So if I want the light to stay on, I just use the wall switch. But in your scenario, the light would turn off when the motion sensor changes the state - and it does have a delay about a minute on its own. So if somebody turns the light off, it will stay off until the motion stops for about a minute and then starts again. That's fine I guess. But again, I could make it so that if wall switch is used, it will disable the automation if I needed that. The way I do that is, I have ESPHome in the switch, and I fire an event when the switch is toggled, and have an automation for that in HA. Or I could call a service to handle the automation directly from the switch.
arrow once. then you get the soft from the video
So instead of having everything sorted and manageable you will end up with a gigantic unformatted yaml file :facepalm:
I would never do this, I spent so much time organizing my ha config in neat packages, really will not trade it for some gui I wouldn't use anyway. HA is clearly regressing in its configuration. Next step will be probably deprecating yaml completely, which will render it unusable for me.
Also I'm confident that complex automations almost always can be split into template binary sensors, timers and simple automations. Yes, there are a few edge cases, but they are very rare.
Aren't you missing the point. You don't need to look at the yaml file with the UI. If you do need it for some reason then you can switch to it in the UI. Things like that and auto complete make me never want to edit a text file again.
@@geejayem59 no I'm not :) Automations in yaml are like code. I can version control them, diff them, copy them, back up them. Automations in gui are like Windows registry, yes it works at this point time (maybe) but if it breaks - it's unfixable, it is not reusable, and not refactorable.
The industry is moving towards infrastructure as code, like docker, kubernetes, terraform etc, but HA is moving in the opposite direction.