Add "state_not" for state condition

[MaJerle]

Describe the feature

When building the automation with the definite state, it is often nice to check the entity state against the value. But often due to the many possible states (for example HVAC), your intent is to reverse the logic and check not in x state.

The proposal is to add the state_not in the state condition check:

- condition: state
  entity_id: media_player.player
  state_not: "off"

Use cases

When you are interested in any state except specifically defined one. For example HVAC can be in the heating, cooling, and other states, and you just want to know if it is not off:

• Media player is not off (can be playing, paused, etc, and more states may be added in the future which decreases the compatibility for the future)
• HVAC is not off (cooling, heating, heating_cooling, auto are few of them. What if more may be added in the future?)
• TV is not off
• ...

Current workarounds

1. Use the template. It gives you full freedom. That being said, the solution is not user friendly and not at all for newbies.

- condition: template
  value_template: '{{ states('media_player.player') != 'off' }}' 

2. Use the not building block, which introduces deeper tree in the UI, and is longer to write.

- condition: not
  conditions:
  - condition: state
    entity_id: media_player.player
    state: "off"

Anything else?

No response

[BBE-FR]

Just to clarify:
How would you consider "unavailable" in that case: "TV not off" if "TV" is "unavailable" is technically true. But do you want this to control an automation?

That is the main risk with this kind of "negative" selection, whereas it is quite easy to select the various states you want to test positively.

[MaJerle]

Valid point, agree with you. Today in my use cases I did not consider the unavailable and unknown cases as the situations in my case were out of these 2 states when automations ran.

This problem exists already today with both workarounds. Template one might be better to be set as:

- condition: template
  value_template: '{{ states('media_player.player') not in ["off", "unavailable", "unknown"] }}' 

In my view, if HA can't know the device state (so either unknown or unavailable), it should consider it off. But this remains the point of debate.

Alternatively, it might be better to allow state_not to accept the array of options.

- condition: state
  entity_id: media_player.player
  state_not:
    - off
    - unavailable
    - unknown