I was just playing with brand new automations, and I realised there is one thing people don't mention in tutrorials on Trigger ID's. That is the Automation Mode. For an example, if you have an automation with delays in it, that part of the automation is still running, which means none of the other triggers will work if your automation is in a "Single" mode until that delay is over. As an example, if you have an action with a delay of 5 minutes, the automation is still running during that 5 minute action delay, which means in Single mode, your automation will not trigger at all in that action delay period. This means you really have to think very carefully on how the different triggers and actions correlate with each other and what mode your automation runs in.
Thanks! Being relatively new to HA, your tutorials are very helpful. My Automations have been simplified to use Trigger ID, thanks to you and this video.
A great tutorial that enabled me to greatly reduce the number of automations. I only had to figure out where to put the light sensor as an additionel condition.
This was a lot tidier than creating automations with a bunch of IF/ELSE conditions , especially when using several conditions to turn on during different time ranges of the day. Finally clicked how to use the "choose between two actions" in the correct way.
Na al meer dan een jaar HA te hebben, was dit iets wat ik zocht. 6 automatisaties herleid naar 1 of 2 eens je door hebt wat je wilt bereiken. Je video's zijn heel leerrijk en toch gemakkelijk uitgelegd. Het slechte nieuws is dat ik weer extra werk heb om alles te herschrijven maar dat is het waard! Geweldige thanks bovenbuur!!! Toppie!!! 😁😁😁
In the same day, in about 15 minutes you taught me about Helpers & Trigger ID's to optimize my automations. Thank you so much, I didn't get a chance to really look in on the documentation and play around, and your videos are very well explained, very thorough and very much appreciated. You have a great presentation style. Cheers.
Thank you! On week 2 with HA. I have HA Yellow Standard. Your tutorial has helped me set up successfully! I was going mad, but think certain motion sensors were not working for some reason. But have this set up in another room perfectly. Thanks so much.
Glad to see you back on the HA scene to provide such useful videos. You've just made my day, I updated all my motion/contact detection based automations.
Thank you so much for this tutorial as well as the how to use motion sensors properly. I must have tried 10 or 15 times to figure this out, and watched and read just about the same amount video/HA documentation, and blog posts. You are an excellent instructor.
Thanks for a great video! That is the video I am looking for, I used to use 3 automations for notifying 15', 30' and 45' each hour. Now I can re-organize it into one automation. That's cool!
Junkie, you are the best with your step-by-step explanations. I was going crazy trying to figure out how to do a single automation with 2 triggers and 2 actions. Thank you :)
I haven’t use automations for a while since i started using nodered but now i’m tempted to use it again with trigger ids. This is gonna make everything a lot tidier
Thanks for this. Working through my first sets of automations and was wondering how to combine on/off start/stop events into one automation. Good work.
Yet another great video. I was struggling to get a boolean to trigger because I couldn't find a way to select it and change the state but going the other way where I did a call service ==> input boolean: turn off ==> with my boolean being the target made it work.
Just what I needed, thank you! - I was trying to modify an existing automation that already had a single action defined, so completely missed the _choose_ action and couldn't figure out how to get the separate sets of actions into the automation. All working now though, thanks to the video.
This was very helpful, trigger_id's finally clicked after watching this. Been re-doing a bunch of my automations and successfully combing them into one. Thank you!
J'ai particulièrement aimé l'exemple des lumières extérieurs à 9:30 du vidéo. J'ai hate de voir si ca va fonctionner ce soir et demain matin :-) Merci pour le vidéo! Maj 9 Jan 2023 am = oui tout à fonctionné! Je vais appliquer cela à d’autre automatisation qui sont en en double ! Encore merci !
@@SmartHomeJunkie So there is one thing I do not understand- in your example the light turns on when motion is detected and off when no motion is detected- I assume the amount of time it takes to turn off is based on the motion sensor default- How would you tell the light to stay on for X minutes before turning off? Would you use "duration (optional)" choice on the light-off trigger or would use a condition or would you use the transition option in Actions? Thanks.
Nice example of the use of multiple triggers. You mentioned in the text that we could ask for a specific automation. Well i have one: I use a Xiaomi curtain motor in the bathroom window. I would like to open the curtain at different triggers depending on the season. Eg in summer it should open at time 07:45, but in the winter it should only open at eg 09:00. At the moment the opening happens at a specific time. And closing works on sunset with an offset. But the combination of season and time, with for each season a different time is what i am not getting right. Would be great if you could help me with that.
@@SmartHomeJunkie So far, so good. Just combined 3 Automations into 1 using Trigger ID's. Odd question: when adding additional conditions, is it necessary to use "AND"? Do you know if, when there are more than 1 Conditions (i.e. Trigger ID and Sun), the default is AND or OR? Below is a yaml example: OPTION 1 (using AND) - choose: - conditions: - condition: trigger id: back_door_sunset - condition: and conditions: - condition: sun after: sunset OPTION 1 (not using AND) - choose: - conditions: - condition: trigger id: back_door_sunset - condition: sun
I never got my head around triggers, but I understand now. I spent the last couple of weeks building HA back up from scratch as my instance kept crashing with no explanation. I didn't like any of the blueprints for the Aqara Cube, so I started last night extracting attribute for what face side it was on, however that would have meant multiple automations. Thanks to you I can do one automation for all the features on one side. Your timing could not have been better. Thank you.
@@antoniodecrisci2369 I am using Zigbee2mqtt with Sonoff dongle, like you say the blue prints can glitchy. Using the face attribute the automation defines what face is up. There are many different actions per face, each action would require a separate automaton, Using trigger IDs can put all the triggers and actions in one Automaton, One face will represent one automaton for all the actions available on that face. So instead of having 54 sperate automations, you just have 6. I hope this helps
@@davidlangley833 thanks for sharing. I must be missing something because at the moment I have one automation entry created and it does about 10 different things, for example it dims and brightens my main lights, open and closes my shades, turns on my fan heater and off, streams music. And with one shake it stops or turns off all these entities. That's maybe 10 things in one automation, using the standard 57 move blueprint. Does this sound correct to you?
@@antoniodecrisci2369 That does sound correct, if necessary I could use all six faces in one automaton, but for me that becomes complicated to follow. Included in 57 actions are turning from one face to another, for example face 5 to 1 or face 3 to 1 etc. which increases the number of auctions. The' basic' automations on one side is 7 actions x that by 6 facesthat is 42 actions. Using the examples above that increases the number of possible actions. My personal coding skills are not great, but using my automations instead of blueprints gives me more control to fulfill my use case. Blueprints are excellent, don't get me wrong and anyone coding the blueprints are incredibly talented. I think I like to know how yaml works hence I will try and do my own automations. Again I hope this helps.
just spent several days chasing my tail not able to get a complex automation to turn off on no-motion trigger. As per usual, check to see if Uncle Ed has a tutorial and problem solved in minutes!!! :) I never thought for a minute that my no-motion trigger should go at the top of the tree and then be referenced as a later option - initially that's counter-intuitive to me - I've been adding it as an action (wait for trigger)at the end of all my if/then/else conditions - and failing every time. With this method though, when I ran it from the UI, it showed it had taken a third option and done nothing, that's all that showed up in Traces, so I thought I'd done something wrong. BUT, walk into the room, correct scene comes on, leave room and get back to laptop to check and it's switched them all off! :) Thanks yet again mate!! :)
@@SmartHomeJunkie I wrote YAML for 15 binary sensors to create time slots based on sunrise/set, because sun isn't available as a helper, only time. But watching this, I think I could have just had multiple trigger IDs based on sun instead and done it all in the UI - I'll give it a try, as it'd be easier to share as a self contained blueprint instead of code. Every day's a school day!!
Many thanks for this. I've built three smart power strips each with four sockets which are individually switched using ESP modules and ESPhome. All 8 sockets on two of the strips come on at 2:00 am when we have cheaper electricity. The 4 sockets on the third strip also come on at 2:00 am but only if an input boolean is set (used mostly to charge power tool batteries, so infrequently). All 12 sockets turn off at 6:00 am when electricity costs more. But two sockets (one on each of two strips) are dedicated to charging phones (one for my phone, and one for my wife's phone). So each of these two sockets will turn off if the individual phone status shows not plugged for two minutes. Also, each one will turn off if the respective 'phone battery level reaches 95%. Two further sockets are dedicated to charging laptops and will turn off after 2 hours (the time it takes to charge each one from almost flat). Finally, one socket is dedicated to fast charging 18650 batteries and will turn off after one hour. To achieve all that, I had 11 automations but after watching your excellent RUclips video, I have everything controlled with a single automation. So many thanks and keep up the good work and I'll certainly buy you a coffee. I have my own RUclips channel so I know just how much time and effort goes into making these videos. Ian
can you create automation that uses time event to start Power switch to turn on my Xmas lights at 4pm and off at 10pm but only Monday to Thursday and Friday Saturday & Sunday start at 4pm still but turn off later say 11:30pm please , I am at a loss was trying to use time patterns also but no luck !
I'm new to HA, so maybe something has been added since this video. An even more powerful feature is to use 'automation trigger variables' to handle multiple states or even multiple entities. For example, the on/off state of the motion detector is available as trigger.to_state.state. The entity_id is available as trigger.entity_id. You could pass the motion state directly to the switch service with no conditional logic. If you're clever in naming your entities according to a pattern, the same automation could handle ALL your motion-controlled lights. There are way more trigger variables than alluded to in the documentation. Once your automation has been triggered at least once, click on TRACES at the upper right. Then click on the 'Changed Variables' tab. You can use any of those variables in your automation. I do use Trigger IDs to introduce associated data. For example, you could set the trigger id to the entity_id of the light you want to control. Again, this eliminates redundant logic. The automation is driven mostly by data rather than code. I don't know if people are exaggerating, but you shouldn't need 100s of automations. At some point you must be repeating similar logic?
Thanks a lot for this another useful video. I had decided to use Node Red since I can put one group of automations together in one flow. The idea was that I would have a better overview. But experienced that it's dificult there to deal with boolean logics and you have sometimes have to convert values etc. As far as I can see it's possible to create a group of automation tasks in one automation using trigger-id's which is excellent. So I have now decided to bring over my Node Red automations to home assistant automations.
Nice, instructive video. But it doesn't really show the advantage of having one larger automation as opposed to two smaller ones. AFAICS, the real advantage is when the two automations have things in common, for example, the conditions. Or when they also trigger a common operation. These would otherwise need to be duplicated which makes maintenance harder.
What is the reason for choosing "Calling a Service" as the action instead of just using a Device action? Also, can TriggerIDs be shared between Automations? I tried it and it doesn't look like it. That would be helpful to make the triggers more reusable so they don't have to be redefined in several automations. I believe in defining something only once.
I explained in a couple of videos why calling a service is better. Mostly because you can easily swap out devices if you call a service using the entity id. This cannot be done using a device call.
This is a great tutorial. Would it be possible to do a slightly updated version to show the current Home Assistant setup? Although still similar, there are some differences now. When you click the 3 dots on the trigger now, the option is called Edit ID rather than Edit Trigger ID and then you get the Trigger ID field.
Thanks for the nice and clear tutorials. It helped me a lot to develop my boards and automation. It’s an addiction this HA. Keep continue the nice video’s.
Good tutorial. Although, I can do this in HA without trigger IDs but with device and it still works. I am not sure if HA recently made an update to automations to make them better. I am currently using one automation to turn on/off my garage lights without trigger id. Is there any benefit to trigger IDs now? My next step would be to group my garage doors together to turn on/off the lights. I am not sure if trigger id will allow for easier grouping. Ps: it funny that I used one of you videos to setup my motion sensor lights and you used trigger ids but I was too lazy to watch your video on trigger id and used device instead and it still worked. That how I found out. Now, I came to your trigger id video to understand how it works and it looks easy. Lol
OR you create a automation triggered by detecting motion which turns on lights then starts a delay and after that turns the light off. You give this automation de mode restart and it works the same. To be honest, I do not know which way would be more or less demanding on the HA system. I just find my way easier to read and debug. Nice explanation of Trigger ID's tho!
Great video! I think I've watched it 4 times over the past few months! Question, maybe a bit off topic, why do you use "call service" instead of "device" then "turn device on/off" entity?
you can do it sorter without choose like so: trigger: - platform: state entity_id: binary_sensor.whatever to: "on" id: "on" - platform: state entity_id: binary_sensor.whatever to: "off" id: "off" action: - service: light.turn_{{ trigger.id }} target: entity_id: light.whatever
I do take issue with the names you gave to your trigger_ids: you have named them based upon the characteristics of the action they are used to trigger rather than the characteristics of what causes the trigger. Better choices than "kitchen-[on|off]" would be, for example, "kitchen-presence-[detected,undetected|." Also, I get that trigger IDs permit using an automation for multiple sets of triggers and actions. What is less clear is why one complex automation is preferred over n simple ones. Possibly that becomes clear when one moves past beginner automations, which I have not.
Thanks for your feedback! I appreciate your perspective on the naming convention for the trigger_ids. It's always interesting to hear different opinions on these matters.
Gives me a better idea on what the Trigger ID's did, I was hoping it would help setting up a trigger with another trigger, eg, if Entering Zone and then open the front door for 2 seconds then do this action, but unfortunately not... but hey... at least I learn't what triggers do... which is a win... keep up the good content.
You might want to watch this video. It's a lightly different subject, but it explains exactly how you can daisy chain automations so that they trigger each other: ruclips.net/video/sNmonuw4EHo/видео.html. And you can use the AND action within the action part of an automation, so if you create two trigger IDs and combine them using an AND or OR in the actions part of an automation, you will get your result as well I believe.
Good tutorial. I like the idea of trigger IDs and I use them, but it isn't clear to me to what extent it is smart to use them. The more complicated an automation, the harder it is to get you head around how it works. Especially if you haven't touched it in a while. more atomic automations may be easier to debug.
What I normally do is draw a schema of the automation I'd like to create on paper first. After that I am building it up step by step and test every step. I have done pretty complex automations that work very well, but sometimes it took a while before I got it to work perfectly indeed. And yes, you don't have to use Trigger IDs for everything. In some cases multiple automations will make it easier to develop the goal that you want to achieve.
Great tutorial, thanks! I understand that combining automations reduces the number of automations. Are there any other benefits to combining automations using triggers?
It gives you a much cleaner overview of all your automations if you have one automations that performs several tasks for the same device. I had loads of them and sometimes it was very difficult to find the one that I made for a specific device. Now I have much less automations which makes my workflow a lot quicker.
This is a great video, I was thinking there had to be a better way than creating two different automations. Do you have a video about a Manual Override Switch? Thanks
Nice video but with time conditions it can also go wrong If the trigger is a sensor and condition that lights can go on and off only between 8 and 9 for example. Most of the sensors has already a time delay for 1:30 min What if time is 8:59 and sensor is triggerd light will go on. but will never go off again because of the time delay of the sensor and after 9 the automation will not run
Are trigger ID's unique to an automation? I want to have 2 automations to control 2 different Hue dimmer switches (4 buttons). Could they both have Trigger ID's of "button 1 short press" (as an example) or do they need to be globally unique?
Hi there, appreciate your videos that are super helpful for beginner me. Question: Do you have a video or can point me to how you added the bulb/light controls? ie. The transition time, RGB value, etc.? I have a basic setup with a Smart Life RGB bulb HA but I cannot see all these options and it limits what I can do.
Hi and many thanks for this nice and powerfull tutorial👍 Creating "global" trigger id's, we can use in multiple automations, is not intended or planned....? This could also make the work easier when specific triggers will be used more often.
BTW excellent videos. I'm learning a ton with you! Question: in the case I have motion sensors that I want to turn active when the sun sets but offset by time how do I do that and where? This video shows something similar and could see the offset feature but this is not I need. My offset is for the sensor and not the light. Hope this makes sense
Great tutorial, I am new to home assistant and have followed your tutorials when learning anything to do with home assistant so thank you, but I'm having an issue where once the light has turned on it will turn itself almost immediately, I've checked but cannot see why, do you have any idea why.
Great video, thank you for putting this together. I am curious, any particular reason why I should pick Call Service instead of the Device? I usually pick Device>Kitchen Light 1>Turn On...
With call service you have more options and you do not depend on a device ID. If you have to exchange a light later on, the automation still works if you use call service. It won't if you use the device because of the needed device ID.
Many thanks for your video (and the one about sending email notifications using GMAIL). Oddly I can get the Aqara water sensor to email but can't get the thermometer to send an email if the temperature gets above a certain point. My question relating to triggers is do I set a trigger/automation based off devices or entities as the sensors appear under both.
Thx! No, I don't have a video for that, but it should be easy to set up if the dimmer switches can be read. I guess out well show you the triggers if you add a dimming switch as a trigger.
Thank you for a great helpful video, I have managed to do a Automation to setup a Shelly Button 1 but on doing so I m having to wait 3 mins between each press of the button for light to turn on or off? Im also trying to find a way to send to mobile and my location with google map and for it to ring or text the location is there ways to do this. Thanks
Good morning - always follow your tutorials. I set up the motion activated light just as yours. In rare cases, when the light is turned off triggered by the light_off, the light will not be triggered by the light_on until wait for some time. I was wondering if it's because both light_on and light_off are almost triggered at the same moment? And the light was triggered by light_off and missed light_on, so the next light_on trigger has to be waited for. thanks!
This video changes a lot for me. Thank you for posting it. I can reduce the number of my automations by at least 50%, maybe more. 1 question, though, is there a point where automation can be "too much?" For example, I have plugged all my lamps into remote dimmers, and they all have remote switches now. Would it be too much to write ALL the remote lamp switch operations into a single automation (5 or 6 lamps total), or should I have just one automation per lamp?
nice video and walkthrough and nice automation, but i have a problem with it, i use it with condition sun, if it gets triggered just before the condition expires, and the off trigger is after condition, the light is on all day. how do you avoid it
Good Day - just followed your video and set up an automation to trigger a light on/off based on motion - worked perfectly - except for - in the action section, all my home rooms show, except for the Guest Bedroom - which is where I setup this automation (I had to select the actual light switch "device"). I verified the light switch is in the area/zones for the house, the light switch and motion detector are assigned to the guest bed room, I have restarted and reboot HA, but the Guest Bedroom does not show in the Call Service choice of this automation. Your help is appreciated.
Well - just learned, that lights and switches are different. My guest bedroom "light switch" is actually a "switch" entity. When in Call Service, if I select "switch", the guest bedroom shows up. All is good. At the very least - thanks for listening...it helped me learn the difference between switches and lights...as entities. in
Amazing! You’ve just halved my code! Cannot believe I didn’t know about triggers. I’ve got so many automations for on and off!! Thank you 🙏🏻
Great that this helped!!!
Same here, I was shocked to see that this clip was 9 months old 😅
This might be the single most useful tutorial on Home Assistant I've ever watched. Trigger IDs with Choose Action == better automations.
Thank you for this compliment!
I was just playing with brand new automations, and I realised there is one thing people don't mention in tutrorials on Trigger ID's.
That is the Automation Mode. For an example, if you have an automation with delays in it, that part of the automation is still running, which means none of the other triggers will work if your automation is in a "Single" mode until that delay is over. As an example, if you have an action with a delay of 5 minutes, the automation is still running during that 5 minute action delay, which means in Single mode, your automation will not trigger at all in that action delay period. This means you really have to think very carefully on how the different triggers and actions correlate with each other and what mode your automation runs in.
Zoals steeds een heel verzorgde en duidelijke video...hartelijk dank ! We weten weer wat gedaan 😉
Dank je wel voor je steun!
You are creating some really good suggestions that seem to be missed by other presenters - well done and really useful - just subscribed
Thank you for the compliment!
Thank you! Very useful info.
Thanks! Being relatively new to HA, your tutorials are very helpful. My Automations have been simplified to use Trigger ID, thanks to you and this video.
A great tutorial that enabled me to greatly reduce the number of automations. I only had to figure out where to put the light sensor as an additionel condition.
Since you published this video, a lot has been changed in Automations. Can you please create an updated video about this topics?
This was a lot tidier than creating automations with a bunch of IF/ELSE conditions , especially when using several conditions to turn on during different time ranges of the day. Finally clicked how to use the "choose between two actions" in the correct way.
Nice tutorial Ed! This will surely simplify a lot of my automations. Greetings by a fellow Dutchie.
I can't thank you enough for your second sunrise/sunset automation! That works perfectly!
Awesome thanks, now to update all my automations 😂
Na al meer dan een jaar HA te hebben, was dit iets wat ik zocht. 6 automatisaties herleid naar 1 of 2 eens je door hebt wat je wilt bereiken. Je video's zijn heel leerrijk en toch gemakkelijk uitgelegd. Het slechte nieuws is dat ik weer extra werk heb om alles te herschrijven maar dat is het waard! Geweldige thanks bovenbuur!!! Toppie!!! 😁😁😁
Heel graag gedaan! Fijn dat ik je kon helpen!
Thank you for your explanations. You are a good teacher
Thank you for the compliments!
In the same day, in about 15 minutes you taught me about Helpers & Trigger ID's to optimize my automations. Thank you so much, I didn't get a chance to really look in on the documentation and play around, and your videos are very well explained, very thorough and very much appreciated. You have a great presentation style. Cheers.
Thank you for this for Stephen! 🙏🏻
Thank you! On week 2 with HA. I have HA Yellow Standard. Your tutorial has helped me set up successfully! I was going mad, but think certain motion sensors were not working for some reason. But have this set up in another room perfectly. Thanks so much.
Great to hear!
Glad to see you back on the HA scene to provide such useful videos.
You've just made my day, I updated all my motion/contact detection based automations.
That's awesome to hear! Trigger IDs are so useful in cutting down your automations, aren't they?
Thank you so much for this tutorial as well as the how to use motion sensors properly. I must have tried 10 or 15 times to figure this out, and watched and read just about the same amount video/HA documentation, and blog posts. You are an excellent instructor.
Thanks for a great video! That is the video I am looking for, I used to use 3 automations for notifying 15', 30' and 45' each hour. Now I can re-organize it into one automation. That's cool!
Junkie, you are the best with your step-by-step explanations. I was going crazy trying to figure out how to do a single automation with 2 triggers and 2 actions.
Thank you :)
Thanks for the compliment! 🙏🏻
I haven’t use automations for a while since i started using nodered but now i’m tempted to use it again with trigger ids. This is gonna make everything a lot tidier
Thanks for this. Working through my first sets of automations and was wondering how to combine on/off start/stop events into one automation. Good work.
Yet another great video. I was struggling to get a boolean to trigger because I couldn't find a way to select it and change the state but going the other way where I did a call service ==> input boolean: turn off ==> with my boolean being the target made it work.
nice and easy tutorial, thanks
Just what I needed, thank you! - I was trying to modify an existing automation that already had a single action defined, so completely missed the _choose_ action and couldn't figure out how to get the separate sets of actions into the automation. All working now though, thanks to the video.
Fantastic! Glad that it helped!
This was very helpful, trigger_id's finally clicked after watching this. Been re-doing a bunch of my automations and successfully combing them into one. Thank you!
Great to hear!
Thanks for this video. I haven’t seen any other HA people on YT talking about trigger id’s. I learned something new today. Cheers!
That's so cool to hear!
J'ai particulièrement aimé l'exemple des lumières extérieurs à 9:30 du vidéo. J'ai hate de voir si ca va fonctionner ce soir et demain matin :-) Merci pour le vidéo! Maj 9 Jan 2023 am = oui tout à fonctionné! Je vais appliquer cela à d’autre automatisation qui sont en en double ! Encore merci !
As someone who is just starting out with HA your explanations are really helpful- Thanks!
Great to hear! Yes, I am trying to help people like you who start with Home Assistant to get you as enthusiastic as me! 😊 It's a great platform!
@@SmartHomeJunkie So there is one thing I do not understand- in your example the light turns on when motion is detected and off when no motion is detected- I assume the amount of time it takes to turn off is based on the motion sensor default- How would you tell the light to stay on for X minutes before turning off? Would you use "duration (optional)" choice on the light-off trigger or would use a condition or would you use the transition option in Actions? Thanks.
@Joseph Anthony Indeed, you can place a delay action before the light.turn off service. This way you can use a delay time of your choice.
Well, I did not know this was a thing. Re-did all my automations, much cleaner. Thanks!
Nice example of the use of multiple triggers. You mentioned in the text that we could ask for a specific automation. Well i have one:
I use a Xiaomi curtain motor in the bathroom window. I would like to open the curtain at different triggers depending on the season.
Eg in summer it should open at time 07:45, but in the winter it should only open at eg 09:00.
At the moment the opening happens at a specific time. And closing works on sunset with an offset.
But the combination of season and time, with for each season a different time is what i am not getting right. Would be great if you could help me with that.
Great use case! I’ll look into it.
Very gooood ! Thank you for this new tutorial, I didnt know this awesome possibilty, I already decreased the number of my automations 💪👍
Superb! Nice to hear that it helped Phil! 👍🏻👍🏻
Hi I like your videos it's very helpful. I wanna ask why did you choose Call service and not choose Device then select the device itself?
Thanks. I used call service because it's a light group and not a device.
Thanks for a great video, helped me a lot with setting up a more advance automation in HA.
Thanks so much for explaining Trigger IDs. Also l had no idea 'Choose' even existed.
Great that it helped. This can be very powerful to create automations that handle multiple scenarios in one!
Excellent, this will probably help me eliminate about a quarter of my automations!
I'm glad I could help!
Yes!!! Thanks! Haven't even watched the video yet, but I'm looking forward to seeing your breakdown after last week's video and comment discussions.
Thank you Chris. I hope it helps.
@@SmartHomeJunkie So far, so good. Just combined 3 Automations into 1 using Trigger ID's.
Odd question: when adding additional conditions, is it necessary to use "AND"? Do you know if, when there are more than 1 Conditions (i.e. Trigger ID and Sun), the default is AND or OR? Below is a yaml example:
OPTION 1 (using AND)
- choose:
- conditions:
- condition: trigger
id: back_door_sunset
- condition: and
conditions:
- condition: sun
after: sunset
OPTION 1 (not using AND)
- choose:
- conditions:
- condition: trigger
id: back_door_sunset
- condition: sun
after: sunset
@@KaleoMgmt Great!
I never got my head around triggers, but I understand now. I spent the last couple of weeks building HA back up from scratch as my instance kept crashing with no explanation. I didn't like any of the blueprints for the Aqara Cube, so I started last night extracting attribute for what face side it was on, however that would have meant multiple automations. Thanks to you I can do one automation for all the features on one side. Your timing could not have been better. Thank you.
That's brilliant! Great to hear!
Just got my Agara cube with conbee II and using the agara blueprint. It's a bit glitchy, but working. How does this new video improve it? Thanks
@@antoniodecrisci2369 I am using Zigbee2mqtt with Sonoff dongle, like you say the blue prints can glitchy. Using the face attribute the automation defines what face is up. There are many different actions per face, each action would require a separate automaton, Using trigger IDs can put all the triggers and actions in one Automaton, One face will represent one automaton for all the actions available on that face. So instead of having 54 sperate automations, you just have 6. I hope this helps
@@davidlangley833 thanks for sharing. I must be missing something because at the moment I have one automation entry created and it does about 10 different things, for example it dims and brightens my main lights, open and closes my shades, turns on my fan heater and off, streams music. And with one shake it stops or turns off all these entities. That's maybe 10 things in one automation, using the standard 57 move blueprint. Does this sound correct to you?
@@antoniodecrisci2369 That does sound correct, if necessary I could use all six faces in one automaton, but for me that becomes complicated to follow. Included in 57 actions are turning from one face to another, for example face 5 to 1 or face 3 to 1 etc. which increases the number of auctions. The' basic' automations on one side is 7 actions x that by 6 facesthat is 42 actions. Using the examples above that increases the number of possible actions. My personal coding skills are not great, but using my automations instead of blueprints gives me more control to fulfill my use case. Blueprints are excellent, don't get me wrong and anyone coding the blueprints are incredibly talented. I think I like to know how yaml works hence I will try and do my own automations. Again I hope this helps.
This is great. Helped me a bunch with setting up new automations with my Zooz lights.
just spent several days chasing my tail not able to get a complex automation to turn off on no-motion trigger. As per usual, check to see if Uncle Ed has a tutorial and problem solved in minutes!!! :)
I never thought for a minute that my no-motion trigger should go at the top of the tree and then be referenced as a later option - initially that's counter-intuitive to me - I've been adding it as an action (wait for trigger)at the end of all my if/then/else conditions - and failing every time.
With this method though, when I ran it from the UI, it showed it had taken a third option and done nothing, that's all that showed up in Traces, so I thought I'd done something wrong. BUT, walk into the room, correct scene comes on, leave room and get back to laptop to check and it's switched them all off! :) Thanks yet again mate!! :)
You're welcome!
@@SmartHomeJunkie I wrote YAML for 15 binary sensors to create time slots based on sunrise/set, because sun isn't available as a helper, only time.
But watching this, I think I could have just had multiple trigger IDs based on sun instead and done it all in the UI - I'll give it a try, as it'd be easier to share as a self contained blueprint instead of code.
Every day's a school day!!
Many thanks for this. I've built three smart power strips each with four sockets which are individually switched using ESP modules and ESPhome. All 8 sockets on two of the strips come on at 2:00 am when we have cheaper electricity. The 4 sockets on the third strip also come on at 2:00 am but only if an input boolean is set (used mostly to charge power tool batteries, so infrequently). All 12 sockets turn off at 6:00 am when electricity costs more. But two sockets (one on each of two strips) are dedicated to charging phones (one for my phone, and one for my wife's phone). So each of these two sockets will turn off if the individual phone status shows not plugged for two minutes. Also, each one will turn off if the respective 'phone battery level reaches 95%. Two further sockets are dedicated to charging laptops and will turn off after 2 hours (the time it takes to charge each one from almost flat). Finally, one socket is dedicated to fast charging 18650 batteries and will turn off after one hour. To achieve all that, I had 11 automations but after watching your excellent RUclips video, I have everything controlled with a single automation. So many thanks and keep up the good work and I'll certainly buy you a coffee. I have my own RUclips channel so I know just how much time and effort goes into making these videos.
Ian
Thank you, Ian.
I really appreciate this! And indeed, creating a video takes a lot of work. I don't think many people realize this.
The only thing I can say is.... You are the Boss!!!
Thanks! I am now using Trigger ID's. Thanks for your help!
No problem
Nice one! Time to clean-up automations. Thanks!
You're very welcome. Yes, you will diminish your automations for sure! I had one case where I could replace six automations by only one! Woohoo! 🎉
Excellent, simple but effective. I can get rid of a few automations now. Thank you
Glad it helped!
Thank you so much Mr Smart Home Junkie! Much appreciated!❤❤❤
You're welcome!
Great i wan thinking about how to organize my many automations, this is a great option thanks.
Thanks for your support!
This was so helpful-thank you for this!
Great to hear that it helped! 👌🏻
can you create automation that uses time event to start Power switch to turn on my Xmas lights at 4pm and off at 10pm but only Monday to Thursday and Friday Saturday & Sunday start at 4pm still but turn off later say 11:30pm please , I am at a loss was trying to use time patterns also but no luck !
Yes, you can. You can select weekdays in the condition.
I'm new to HA, so maybe something has been added since this video. An even more powerful feature is to use 'automation trigger variables' to handle multiple states or even multiple entities. For example, the on/off state of the motion detector is available as trigger.to_state.state. The entity_id is available as trigger.entity_id. You could pass the motion state directly to the switch service with no conditional logic. If you're clever in naming your entities according to a pattern, the same automation could handle ALL your motion-controlled lights. There are way more trigger variables than alluded to in the documentation. Once your automation has been triggered at least once, click on TRACES at the upper right. Then click on the 'Changed Variables' tab. You can use any of those variables in your automation. I do use Trigger IDs to introduce associated data. For example, you could set the trigger id to the entity_id of the light you want to control. Again, this eliminates redundant logic. The automation is driven mostly by data rather than code. I don't know if people are exaggerating, but you shouldn't need 100s of automations. At some point you must be repeating similar logic?
Thanks a lot for this another useful video. I had decided to use Node Red since I can put one group of automations together in one flow. The idea was that I would have a better overview. But experienced that it's dificult there to deal with boolean logics and you have sometimes have to convert values etc.
As far as I can see it's possible to create a group of automation tasks in one automation using trigger-id's which is excellent. So I have now decided to bring over my Node Red automations to home assistant automations.
Good choice!!!
Wow very interesting!
I have no idea of this feature.
Thanks a lot!
Saludos!
Nice, instructive video. But it doesn't really show the advantage of having one larger automation as opposed to two smaller ones. AFAICS, the real advantage is when the two automations have things in common, for example, the conditions. Or when they also trigger a common operation. These would otherwise need to be duplicated which makes maintenance harder.
Indeed! Thanks for this addition.
I just found out, that you can copy each trigger. This makes it much easier to click them together. Just press the three dots and choose duplicate.
What is the reason for choosing "Calling a Service" as the action instead of just using a Device action?
Also, can TriggerIDs be shared between Automations? I tried it and it doesn't look like it. That would be helpful to make the triggers more reusable so they don't have to be redefined in several automations. I believe in defining something only once.
I explained in a couple of videos why calling a service is better. Mostly because you can easily swap out devices if you call a service using the entity id. This cannot be done using a device call.
This is a great tutorial. Would it be possible to do a slightly updated version to show the current Home Assistant setup? Although still similar, there are some differences now.
When you click the 3 dots on the trigger now, the option is called Edit ID rather than Edit Trigger ID and then you get the Trigger ID field.
Thanks for the video. I've been combining automations and they are working.
Thanks for the nice and clear tutorials. It helped me a lot to develop my boards and automation. It’s an addiction this HA. Keep continue the nice video’s.
Thanks Erwin. I hope I can continue to do this for a long time.
Good tutorial. Although, I can do this in HA without trigger IDs but with device and it still works. I am not sure if HA recently made an update to automations to make them better. I am currently using one automation to turn on/off my garage lights without trigger id. Is there any benefit to trigger IDs now?
My next step would be to group my garage doors together to turn on/off the lights. I am not sure if trigger id will allow for easier grouping.
Ps: it funny that I used one of you videos to setup my motion sensor lights and you used trigger ids but I was too lazy to watch your video on trigger id and used device instead and it still worked. That how I found out. Now, I came to your trigger id video to understand how it works and it looks easy. Lol
Thanks for a wonderful job you are doing. -
What if I would like the action of a climate "preset mode" to be like the actual helper "Dropdown" mode.
Bedankt voor de duidelijke uitleg.
You're welcome jdep0 ☺️
OR you create a automation triggered by detecting motion which turns on lights then starts a delay and after that turns the light off. You give this automation de mode restart and it works the same.
To be honest, I do not know which way would be more or less demanding on the HA system. I just find my way easier to read and debug. Nice explanation of Trigger ID's tho!
Yeah, it's just to give you an idea of how you can use Trigger IDs. The main purpose is to show that Trigger IDs exist and that they are VERY handy.
@@SmartHomeJunkie Great video explaining exactly that!
I love your style and method. Keep up the great work.
Thank you V J! Cheers!
Great video! I think I've watched it 4 times over the past few months! Question, maybe a bit off topic, why do you use "call service" instead of "device" then "turn device on/off" entity?
If you use call service, you often have more options.
Amazing. I think I love you. Subbed.
you can do it sorter without choose like so:
trigger:
- platform: state
entity_id: binary_sensor.whatever
to: "on"
id: "on"
- platform: state
entity_id: binary_sensor.whatever
to: "off"
id: "off"
action:
- service: light.turn_{{ trigger.id }}
target:
entity_id: light.whatever
That's a cool addition! Thx. For more advanced automations you might need choose through.
I do take issue with the names you gave to your trigger_ids: you have named them based upon the characteristics of the action they are used to trigger rather than the characteristics of what causes the trigger. Better choices than "kitchen-[on|off]" would be, for example, "kitchen-presence-[detected,undetected|." Also, I get that trigger IDs permit using an automation for multiple sets of triggers and actions. What is less clear is why one complex automation is preferred over n simple ones. Possibly that becomes clear when one moves past beginner automations, which I have not.
Thanks for your feedback! I appreciate your perspective on the naming convention for the trigger_ids. It's always interesting to hear different opinions on these matters.
Thank you, very usefull
You're welcome!
Great info. Thanks.
Thank you for the compliment!
Gives me a better idea on what the Trigger ID's did, I was hoping it would help setting up a trigger with another trigger, eg, if Entering Zone and then open the front door for 2 seconds then do this action, but unfortunately not... but hey... at least I learn't what triggers do... which is a win... keep up the good content.
You might want to watch this video. It's a lightly different subject, but it explains exactly how you can daisy chain automations so that they trigger each other: ruclips.net/video/sNmonuw4EHo/видео.html.
And you can use the AND action within the action part of an automation, so if you create two trigger IDs and combine them using an AND or OR in the actions part of an automation, you will get your result as well I believe.
@@SmartHomeJunkie thanks so much, I'll take a look at it today.
Hi! Welcome back 🌹
Thank you Jessica! 🙏🏻
Wow, this is cool, time to move back from Node-RED.
Thank you!
You're welcome!
Good tutorial. I like the idea of trigger IDs and I use them, but it isn't clear to me to what extent it is smart to use them. The more complicated an automation, the harder it is to get you head around how it works. Especially if you haven't touched it in a while. more atomic automations may be easier to debug.
What I normally do is draw a schema of the automation I'd like to create on paper first. After that I am building it up step by step and test every step. I have done pretty complex automations that work very well, but sometimes it took a while before I got it to work perfectly indeed. And yes, you don't have to use Trigger IDs for everything. In some cases multiple automations will make it easier to develop the goal that you want to achieve.
Thanks Ed, this is great. I have just subscribed :)
Thank you for your support Ben!
Great tutorial, thanks! I understand that combining automations reduces the number of automations. Are there any other benefits to combining automations using triggers?
It gives you a much cleaner overview of all your automations if you have one automations that performs several tasks for the same device. I had loads of them and sometimes it was very difficult to find the one that I made for a specific device. Now I have much less automations which makes my workflow a lot quicker.
This is a great video, I was thinking there had to be a better way than creating two different automations. Do you have a video about a Manual Override Switch? Thanks
Nice video but with time conditions it can also go wrong
If the trigger is a sensor and condition that lights can go on and off only between 8 and 9 for example. Most of the sensors has already a time delay for 1:30 min
What if time is 8:59 and sensor is triggerd light will go on. but will never go off again because of the time delay of the sensor and after 9 the automation will not run
That's not the point of the video. The point is to show how trigger IDs work.
Are trigger ID's unique to an automation? I want to have 2 automations to control 2 different Hue dimmer switches (4 buttons). Could they both have Trigger ID's of "button 1 short press" (as an example) or do they need to be globally unique?
Yes, you can use the same trigger ID in multiple automations. They are bound to the specific automation.
Wow been trying to get this worked and failed until watched your guide
Hi there, appreciate your videos that are super helpful for beginner me.
Question: Do you have a video or can point me to how you added the bulb/light controls? ie. The transition time, RGB value, etc.? I have a basic setup with a Smart Life RGB bulb HA but I cannot see all these options and it limits what I can do.
Thanks. You have to enable advanced mode in HA to see them. It's in your user profile settings.
Hi and many thanks for this nice and powerfull tutorial👍
Creating "global" trigger id's, we can use in multiple automations, is not intended or planned....?
This could also make the work easier when specific triggers will be used more often.
No, and I don't think it will work either. If two automations run at the same time, the trigger IDs might get mixed up if they were global.
BTW excellent videos. I'm learning a ton with you! Question: in the case I have motion sensors that I want to turn active when the sun sets but offset by time how do I do that and where? This video shows something similar and could see the offset feature but this is not I need. My offset is for the sensor and not the light. Hope this makes sense
Great tutorial, I am new to home assistant and have followed your tutorials when learning anything to do with home assistant so thank you, but I'm having an issue where once the light has turned on it will turn itself almost immediately, I've checked but cannot see why, do you have any idea why.
Great video, thank you for putting this together. I am curious, any particular reason why I should pick Call Service instead of the Device? I usually pick Device>Kitchen Light 1>Turn On...
With call service you have more options and you do not depend on a device ID. If you have to exchange a light later on, the automation still works if you use call service. It won't if you use the device because of the needed device ID.
fijn bedankt heel duidelijk dat is wat ik zocht 😉
Top! Mooi dat ik je heb kunnen helpen Benno!
your videos are wonderful. Can you help with Latest version HA Alarmo setup please?
Thank you. I will put it on the list.
@@SmartHomeJunkie YOU ARE THE BEST. Thank you.
Thanks
Thank you so much for your support 🙏🏻
Great tutorial !! would it be possible that you make a video for blinds control...?
If I had blind controls then yes. I do have something in the pipeline. A company sent me some devices that I have to check out first.
Many thanks for your video (and the one about sending email notifications using GMAIL). Oddly I can get the Aqara water sensor to email but can't get the thermometer to send an email if the temperature gets above a certain point. My question relating to triggers is do I set a trigger/automation based off devices or entities as the sensors appear under both.
Man. This just cut down my automatons by...... a lot!
Great, do you have a video for start dimming and stop dimming for dimming switches?
Thx! No, I don't have a video for that, but it should be easy to set up if the dimmer switches can be read. I guess out well show you the triggers if you add a dimming switch as a trigger.
I just checked. The Philips Dimmer switch has a lot of Triggers for starting dimming, so you should be able to get this done.
Thank you for a great helpful video, I have managed to do a Automation to setup a Shelly Button 1 but on doing so I m having to wait 3 mins between each press of the button for light to turn on or off? Im also trying to find a way to send to mobile and my location with google map and for it to ring or text the location is there ways to do this. Thanks
Top notch!!
Thanks 👍🏻
Good morning - always follow your tutorials. I set up the motion activated light just as yours. In rare cases, when the light is turned off triggered by the light_off, the light will not be triggered by the light_on until wait for some time. I was wondering if it's because both light_on and light_off are almost triggered at the same moment? And the light was triggered by light_off and missed light_on, so the next light_on trigger has to be waited for. thanks!
Question: could you use this trigger_ids in other automations as well?
Nope, they can only be used in the automation where they are declared.
This video changes a lot for me. Thank you for posting it. I can reduce the number of my automations by at least 50%, maybe more. 1 question, though, is there a point where automation can be "too much?" For example, I have plugged all my lamps into remote dimmers, and they all have remote switches now. Would it be too much to write ALL the remote lamp switch operations into a single automation (5 or 6 lamps total), or should I have just one automation per lamp?
If you're exclusively using the visual editor, then do whatever is easiest for you to maintain. The performance difference is going to be negligible.
nice video and walkthrough and nice automation, but i have a problem with it, i use it with condition sun, if it gets triggered just before the condition expires, and the off trigger is after condition, the light is on all day. how do you avoid it
Hi! Add the condition to your action instead of in the conditions area.
Good Day - just followed your video and set up an automation to trigger a light on/off based on motion - worked perfectly - except for - in the action section, all my home rooms show, except for the Guest Bedroom - which is where I setup this automation (I had to select the actual light switch "device"). I verified the light switch is in the area/zones for the house, the light switch and motion detector are assigned to the guest bed room, I have restarted and reboot HA, but the Guest Bedroom does not show in the Call Service choice of this automation. Your help is appreciated.
Well - just learned, that lights and switches are different. My guest bedroom "light switch" is actually a "switch" entity. When in Call Service, if I select "switch", the guest bedroom shows up. All is good. At the very least - thanks for listening...it helped me learn the difference between switches and lights...as entities. in
I hope you'll make a new video about triggerid. There has been many changes in the menu
Yeah, but the mechanism is still the same.