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Home Assistant is open source home automation that puts local control and privacy first. Powered by a worldwide community of tinkerers and DIY enthusiasts. Perfect to run on a Raspberry Pi or a local server. Available for free at home-assistant.io

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How do I add a cool down to an automation? (lemmy.today)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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I have an automation that turns my driveway lights on when motion is detected. It normally works fairly well but it was windy last night and that caused the automation to trip endlessly as my trees and bushes were whipping around. Lights would come on, shut off 10 minutes later, then turn right back on again. It basically did this all night until I disabled the automation.

I'll do some fine tuning of the motion sensors which will help and I'm considering adding a condition to the automation where it won't trip if the wind speed is above a certain level but how can I add some kind of cool down timer to the automation to prevent it from endlessly engaging?

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

To me this automation seems much better suited to using the Node-RED addon. There is a built in “delay” node that can be used for rate limiting. You would set the delay node to once per hour and put it between the node watching your motion sensor, and the node flipping the light switch. Easy stuff. You could do the same with one or two more nodes to get and check the current wind speed and put that inline as well.

Keep in mind though, any kind of rate limiting/cool down makes it more likely that the lights won’t turn on when you actually want them to. For example, if you leave the house and come back after the lights have turned off, but before the cool down period expires you won’t have lights.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

To me this automation seems much better suited to using the Node-RED addon.

Node Red is a decent suggestion but I'm not currently using it and I'd prefer not to add it just to handle this one thing. Someone else suggested some logic to handle the cool down and I can put the wind speed directly into the automation as a condition.

Keep in mind though, any kind of rate limiting/cool down makes it more likely that the lights won’t turn on when you actually want them to.

Yeah, that's an issue. I'm thinking that instead of a cool down it would be a better solution to either install a motion sensor into a position where it can't see the shrubbery whipping around in the wind OR to create a separate automation for nights with High Wind that just pins the lights on at 50%.