Automation
This page will go into more detail about the various options the automation component offers. If you haven’t yet, read the getting started page on automation.
A configuration section of an automation requires a trigger and an action section. condition and condition_type are optional. To keep this page compact, all following sections will not show the full configuration but only the relevant part.
# Example of entry in configuration.yaml automation: # Turns on lights 1 hour before sunset if people are home # and if people get home between 16:00-23:00 - alias: 'Rule 1 Light on in the evening' trigger: # Prefix the first line of each trigger configuration # with a '-' to enter multiple - platform: sun event: sunset offset: '-01:00:00' - platform: state entity_id: group.all_devices state: 'home' condition: # Prefix the first line of each condition configuration # with a '-'' to enter multiple - platform: state entity_id: group.all_devices state: 'home' - platform: time after: '16:00:00' before: '23:00:00' action: service: homeassistant.turn_on entity_id: group.living_room # Turn off lights when everybody leaves the house - alias: 'Rule 2 - Away Mode' trigger: platform: state entity_id: group.all_devices state: 'not_home' action: service: light.turn_off entity_id: group.all_lights # Notify when Paulus leaves the house in the evening - alias: 'Leave Home notification' trigger: platform: zone event: leave zone: zone.home entity_id: device_tracker.paulus condition: platform: time after: '20:00' action: service: notify.notify data: message: 'Paulus left the house'
Triggers
Triggers are what starts the processing of an automation rule. It is possible to specify multiple triggers for the same rule. Once a trigger starts, Home Assistant will validate the conditions, if any, and call the action.
Event trigger
Triggers when an event is being processed. Events are the raw building blocks of Home Assistant. You can match events on just the event name or also require specific event data to be present.
automation: trigger: platform: event event_type: MY_CUSTOM_EVENT # optional event_data: mood: happy
MQTT trigger
Triggers when a specific message is received on given topic. Optionally can match on the payload being sent over the topic.
automation: trigger: platform: mqtt topic: living_room/switch/ac # Optional payload: 'on'
Numeric state trigger
On state change of a specified entity, attempts to parse the state as a number and triggers if value is above and/or below a threshold.
automation: trigger: platform: numeric_state entity_id: sensor.temperature # Optional value_template: '{{ state.attributes.battery }}' # At least one of the following required above: 17 below: 25
State trigger
Triggers when the state of an entity changes. If only entity_id given will match all state changes.
automation: trigger: platform: state entity_id: device_tracker.paulus # Optional from: 'not_home' to: 'home'
Use quotes around your values for from and to to avoid the YAML parser interpreting values as booleans.
Sun trigger
Trigger when the sun is setting or rising. An optional time offset can be given to have it trigger for example 45 minutes before sunset, when dusk is setting in.
automation: trigger: platform: sun # Possible values: sunset, sunrise event: sunset # Optional time offset. This example is 45 minutes. offset: '-00:45:00'
Template trigger
Template triggers work by evaluating a template on each state change. The trigger will fire if the state change caused the template to render ‘true’. This is achieved by having the template result in a true boolean expression ({{ is_state('device_tracker.paulus', 'home') }}) or by having the template render ‘true’ (example below).
automation: trigger: platform: template value_template: '{% if is_state('device_tracker.paulus', 'home') %}true{% endif %}'
Time trigger
Time can be triggered in many ways. The most common is to specify after and trigger at a specific point in time each day. Alternatively, you can also match if the hour, minute or second of the current time has a specific value. You can prefix the value with a / to match whenever the value is divisible by that number. You cannot use after together with hour, minute or second.
automation: trigger: platform: time # Matches every hour at 5 minutes past whole minutes: 5 seconds: 0 automation 2: trigger: platform: time # When 'after' is used, you cannot also match on hour, minute, seconds. # Military time format. after: '15:32:00' automation 3: trigger: platform: time # You can also match on interval. This will match every 5 minutes minutes: '/5' seconds: 0
Zone trigger
Zone triggers can trigger when an entity is entering or leaving the zone. For zone automation to work, you need to have setup a device tracker platform that supports reporting GPS coordinates. Currently this is limited to the OwnTracks platform.
automation: trigger: platform: zone entity_id: device_tracker.paulus zone: zone.home # Event is either enter or leave event: enter
Conditions
Conditions are an optional part of an automation rule and be used to prevent an action from happening when triggered. Conditions look very familiar to triggers but are very different. A trigger will look at events happening at the system while a condition only looks at how the system looks right now. A trigger can observe that a switch is being turned on. A condition can only see if a switch is on or off.
An automation rule can have mulitiple triggers. By default the action will only fire if all conditions pass. An optional key condition_type: 'or' can be set on the automation rule to fire action if any condition matches. In the example below, the automation would trigger if the time is before 05:00 OR after 20:00.
automation: condition_type: or condition: - platform: time before: '05:00' - platform: time after: '20:00'
If your triggers and conditions are exactly the same, you can use a shortcut to specify conditions. In this case, triggers that are not valid conditions will be ignored.
automation: condition: use_trigger_values
Numeric state condition
Attempts to parse the state of specified entity as a number and triggers if value is above and/or below a threshold.
automation: condition: platform: numeric_state entity_id: sensor.temperature # At least one of the following required above: 17 below: 25 # Optional value_template: '{{ state.attributes.battery }}'
State condition
Tests if an entity is a specified state.
automation: condition: platform: state entity_id: device_tracker.paulus state: not_home
Sun condition
The sun condition can test if the sun has already set or risen when a trigger occurs. The before and after keys can only be set to sunset or sunrise. They have a corresponding optional offset value (before_offset, after_offset) that can be added, similar to the sun trigger.
automation: condition: platform: sun after: sunset # Optional offset value after_offset: "-1:00:00"
Template condition
The template condition will test if given template renders a value equal to true. This is achieved by having the template result in a true boolean expression or by having the template render ‘true’.
automation: condition: platform: template value_template: '{{ state.attributes.battery > 50 }}' # Or value_template could be: # {% if state.attributes.battery > 50 %}true{% else %}false{% endif %}
Time condition
The time condition can test if it is after a specified time, before a specified time or if it is a certain day of the week
automation: condition: platform: time # At least one of the following is required. after: '15:00:00' before: '23:00:00' weekday: - mon - wed - fri
Valid values for weekday are (sun, mon, tue, wed, thu, fri & sat)
Zone condition
Zone conditions test if an entity is in a certain zone. For zone automation to work, you need to have setup a device tracker platform that supports reporting GPS coordinates. Currently this is limited to the OwnTracks platform.
automation: condition: platform: zone entity_id: device_tracker.paulus zone: zone.home
Actions
When an automation rule fires, it calls a service. For this service you can specify an entity id it should apply to and optional service parameters (to specify for example the brightness).
automation: # Change the light in the kitchen and living room to 150 brightness and color red. action: service: homeassistant.turn_on entity_id: - light.kitchen - light.living_room data: brightness: 150 rgb_color: [255, 0, 0]
automation: # Notify me on my mobile phone of an event action: service: notify.notify data: message: Something just happened, better take a look!
If you want to specify multiple services to be called or include a delay, have a look at the script component. If you want to describe how certain entities should look, check out the scene component.
Troubleshooting
You can verify that your automation rules are being initialized correctly by watching both the realtime logs and also the logbook. The realtime logs will show the rules being initialized (once for each trigger):
INFO [homeassistant.components.automation] Initialized rule Rainy Day INFO [homeassistant.components.automation] Initialized rule Rainy Day INFO [homeassistant.components.automation] Initialized rule Rainy Day INFO [homeassistant.components.automation] Initialized rule Rain is over
The Logbook component will show a line entry when an automation is triggered. You can look at the previous entry to determine which trigger in the rule triggered the event.
