Trigger automation when any referenced entity changes

[grahamj]

Describe the feature

I would like a new trigger or automation option which means "When any entity referenced in Conditions or Actions changes"

Use cases

Consider the simple situation of having a light on between sun down and sun up. The intuitive approach would be to create one automation that triggers on sun down, and another on sun up. More advanced users might combine these into one automation, with triggers for both sun states and a choose block that switches on trigger ID.

But what if the trigger was missed somehow, say by HA restarting at that time? How can you set the light to the state it should be at times other than when the sun state changes?

The solution is not to switch based on trigger ID but the current state of the sun entity: "If sun is down turn light on else turn light off". Now you can add a simple "When sun changes" trigger, an HA restart trigger, time pattern, or whatever else might necessitate setting the light to the "correct" state at that time. Much better!

The trouble is, when these automations grow it becomes a chore to ensure there is a trigger for every state referenced in Conditions or Actions to ensure it runs when they change. A new trigger which was simply "any referenced entity changes" would make these so much more elegant.

Thanks for coming to my TED talk 😄

Current workarounds

Add a trigger for every entity referenced in Conditions or Actions, and manually keep them up to date when making changes to those sections.

Anything else?

No response

[MaJerle]

My solution to this problem is to trigger on:

• Presence state changed
• Sun up/down
• HA restarted

No general condition

Actions have the condition:

• If sun is outside condition, turn off the lights else
• If TV is on, put them to TV watching scene
• else just turn them on normally

This ensures that:

• Lights go on if one watches TV and sun goes down while in the room
• Lights go on if someone enters but only within allowed sun state
• Lights go off if noone in the room or if one is in the room while sun is at the state when lights should be off

[grahamj]

My solution to this problem is to trigger on:
* Presence state changed
* Sun up/down
* HA restarted

Yes, but as I said:

The trouble is, when these automations grow it becomes a chore to ensure there is a trigger for every state referenced in Conditions or Actions to ensure it runs when they change.

You've illustrated this nicely by forgetting to include a trigger for TV state 😄 If the sun goes down while HA is restarting and then someone starts watching TV the lights will remain off.

That's the problem my idea solves - having to keep your list of triggers synched with the entities used in the actions. I have whole room handler automations that consider the states of a dozen or more entities so the trigger lists get unmanageable. Since most of the triggers are "an entity referenced in an action changed" it would be great if these could be handled automatically.

[MaJerle]

Before we make a noise too far, I just forgot to write it. Of course there must be a trigger for TV, or the full system logic falls apart.

If the sun goes down while HA is restarting and then someone starts watching TV the lights will remain off.

No, HA restart event will set the scene after being ready. Anyway, if HA is down, no automation is there, regardless of the triggers :)

In my view, triggering on every entity change that is in the automation will make the automation more complex, even the basic ones. I don't see the true point to be very open with you.

Imagine the case where you have motion control lights

• Trigger is the motion detected event.
• A condition is is motion triggered light enabled?.

When motion is detected, light will turn on, but only if the helper switch is enabled. Now one toggles the switch from off to on and automation will fire (according to your proposal). Condition is a pass and light will go on, even if motion was not detected, unless one adds the motion sensor state in the condition too, which complicates everything in the first place.

For simple automations, it will have more overhead, for more advanced, one is already doing all listed above (trigger on all possible events with conditional execution in the actions part)

[grahamj]

No, HA restart event will set the scene after being ready. Anyway, if HA is down, no automation is there, regardless of the triggers :)

When HA restarts the TV scene won't be set because the TV wouldn't be on at that time, and it won't be set later when the TV is turned on due to the lack of trigger.

Anyway I understand it was just a small mistake to forget the trigger, my point is it's an easy mistake to make and one that wouldn't happen with my idea.

For simple automations, it will have more overhead, for more advanced, one is already doing all listed above (trigger on all possible events with conditional execution in the actions part)

This is definitely about the advanced cases and listing all the triggers is what I would like to avoid.

[rthsw]

I confirm. The Solutions don't understand the problem (i think).
Imagine the Trigger: If time is after 8 am, Condition "above 20° Celsius", Action "Start garden watering".
My problem is car loading regulation with 5 Automations: Start loading if enough Sunlight, rise Car charging Ampere if there is still enough Charging power, lower Car charging if the house batteries are affected and 2 more.

Back to the simple example: This Automation is once (!!!) fired: In the morning at 8am. If the temperature is raising above 20° C at 8:01, there will be no "Garden watering" started. Even if the temperature is raising above 30° Celsius after 8:00:02 in the morning.

I would like something like "Check Trigger every hh:mm:ss".
So i could restart the trigger every 1 Minute, and if the temperature is high enough at 8:01, or at 8:02, or at 8:03, the watering will start.
In my Car Chargin model:
If the House battery is above 98 keep the Car charging on even if the House batteries discharge.
This is fired once, at the charge from 97% to 98%. Not later. Not at 99 or at 100.
As mentioned: There are 5 Automations which will make the car charging follow the Sun-power, determined by the House-battery Charging power (my only indicator for Power of Sunlight yet).
I know: I can emulate this by doubling all Triggers to the Conditions and all conditions to the triggers... but this is not smart, not easy, not nice and not intuitive.
A property on the Automation "Check Trigger every hh:mm:ss" would make this much more simple and easy to understand and easy to maintain.

This problem exists on any automations with conditions: Because the Automation is only fired once after the trigger becomes true, and maybe the automation is stopped because of an condition is false, it will not be fired again after the conditions also becomes thru. There is a help at the forum starting with "a lot of people wondering why their automation is not starting".
https://blog.ceard.tech/2021/07/why-didnt-my-automation-run
https://community.home-assistant.io/t/automation-triggers-only-once-when-conditions-not-met-when-conditions-change-it-does-not-retrigger/653333
So why not make the Automation more intuitive and let Automations test their initial trigger more simple/often/repeatly?

[grahamj]

You get it 👍🏻

For your watering automation you'd need a >20C trigger and a 1 minute time pattern. Then in Actions you'd have "IF time is >8am AND temp > 20C AND watering is off THEN turn on watering"

In other words, duplicating all the entities referenced in Actions as Triggers. With my idea you'd only need the one "if any referenced entity changes" trigger.

You raise an interesting point about time though - your problem was solved by adding a time pattern trigger but being able to tell HA to re-evaluate a trigger condition on an interval would serve the same purpose. It wouldn't avoid having to have the temperature as both a trigger and a condition though, since you still need to evaluate both the time and the temperature states to know if you need to turn on the watering.

[thislooksfun]

Came here to ask for this same thing. I have several automations (and counting) that trigger only when several states align, but setting them up is a pain. For example, automatically turning off the bathroom fan when the humidity is low and the room is unoccupied requires specifying both of those states twice: once in the triggers so it checks every time any relevant state changes, and again in the "And if" to make it only happen when both values align.

It would be much more convenient (and concise) to instead just write out the condition I want to check for (both aligning) and have the system figure out what the triggers should be automatically.

Basically I want a way to combine the "When" and "And if" blocks into one "If" condition that auto-refreshes every time an input changes.

[DocZoid]

Same topic:
https://github.com/orgs/home-assistant/discussions/439 (this)
https://github.com/orgs/home-assistant/discussions/888
https://github.com/orgs/home-assistant/discussions/926
This is obv. bothering many but hard to find and to upvote.