How to Combine BUTTONS and AUTOMATIONS in Home Assistant - Tutorial

[@wa8khp-468]

Your flow diagrams and visuals put you head and shoulders above all other HA presentations! I have learned a tremendous amount from you in the past six weeks after installing HA for the first time on a NUC. THANKS David.

[@MichaelAlderete]

You're really leveling up the visuals for your explanations! This is a complex scenario (even with just one button, one helper, and two automations!), but very well explained, verbally and visually. And I really appreciate how you're building a library of lessons that build on each other, taking folks from pretty simple concepts to the much more complex. I hope we'll be seeing many more videos in the future!

[@SmartHomeJunkie]

Thank you for your compliments! 🙏🏻

[@johnswilley6764]

I love it! Just what I needed. Working on a basic system here. Have watched several of your videos (plus some others), but yours I find to be the most succinct, and informative; while your digressions also provide a wealth of information on related topics. Best wishes to you Sir in your New Year. [From Orlando, Florida U.S.A.]

[@Rich1887]

Excellant tutorial. I now have two buttons, one to boost Myenergi Eddi for 15 mins and another to boost for 30 minutes. Now we will not have to struggle with multiple button presses on the Eddi in a dark cramped cupboard!

[@gregnordstrom]

What a great tutorial! I really appreciate the "here's how to design an automation" approach--so much better than a lot of the "watch me do magic" videos that are out there. (Not to knock those latter ones, but for us rookies explaining the "whys" as well as the "hows" is what is needed!) Anyway, thanks! This is very helpful and much appreciated!

[@cdeme123]

I'm glad I watched this. Without knowing too much about helpers, I would have simply created additional triggers in an automation. However, it is always a good idea to de-centralize or "decouple" your code as much as possible. The helper can also be used outside of a single automation making automations smaller and more likely to work.

[@marsomike]

Excellent videos Keep on like that. You have the most clear, understandable channel i have ever seen on you tube since now and you have the skill to make the difficult seems very easy!!!!!!!

[@SmartHomeJunkie]

Oh wow, what a great compliment! Thank you thank you. This really motivates me to create more videos! 🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻

[@jimbo149]

Thanks Ed, watching your tutorial again helped me get a handle on how to turn automation's on and off using helpers!

[@waltervos8537]

Als beginner sta ik er weer versteld van hoe veel je van een duidelijke video kan opsteken! Maar nu moet HA even wijken want mijn vrouw wil een wandeling in het zonnetje gaan maken. En de kerk moet in het midden blijven .....

[@SmartHomeJunkie]

Thanks for the compliment! Dank je wel voor je compliment!

[@ricardoramirez-ue5li]

Wow, excellent! I learned a lot of new things, thanks a lot, mate, really helpfull :) Now I managed to create a button to call webhooks to IFTTT that then call a Tuya device (a water/gas valve). Thanks again!

[@NsteveA]

The first 3:30 of this video alone helped me solve my problem! Great job!

[@SmartHomeJunkie]

Great to hear!

[@hjaltihjartarson]

Your tutorials are really some of the best!

[@SmartHomeJunkie]

Oh wow, that is a huge compliment! Thank you for your support!!! 🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻

[@hjaltihjartarson]

@@SmartHomeJunkie I have implemented your triggers and I see plenty of use for these helpers aswell.

[@SmartHomeJunkie]

@@hjaltihjartarson Wow! Great to hear. Let me know if you have other examples that you thought of yourself.

[@hjaltihjartarson]

@@SmartHomeJunkie my biggest issue right now is that my living room has 20 small GU10 lights. Automating scenes for this using time of day and a zigbee button controller from Sunricher. Any ideas on setting something like this up would be a cool thing

[@SmartHomeJunkie]

I would create light groups and scripts for every lightgroup to switch the light group to a certain Kelvin value. Not sure how that button works, but I assume it has multiple triggers, so you could trigger the correct "scene" which is actually a script for every trigger on the button. Not sure if I understood your use case clearly though.

[@DavidWhatfor]

Jus what I was looking for, a way to override automations via virtual switches as quite new to HA and helpers. Jus put a condition in the automation for the state of the helper. Awesome.

[@SmartHomeJunkie]

Great to hear!

[@calgarraway9509]

Well done. Thanks for sharing your knowledge.

[@marcelsmeets4162]

Great video Ed. Learned a lot. Thanks!

[@SmartHomeJunkie]

Great to hear Marcel! Glad that it helped.

[@drreality1]

Great idea, I wonder if we could mix this with timer/ countdown ? Thanks

[@SmartHomeJunkie]

Thx! I think that shouldn't be a problem indeed!

[@dannydrijkoningen7322]

Great video. Since there is a P1 energy meter installed in our house we need to raise our self consumption in the house. Because I don't want to install a battery yet, I need to raise the self consumption in an other way. With this tutorial I managed to automate the pump of the swimming pool, the heatpump of the swimming pool and the boiler for hot water production. Depending on winter mode, where the pool is disabled or in summer mode, where the pool is primair. And this all based on energy consumption of the P1 energy meter. Thanks a lot

[@SmartHomeJunkie]

Wow, that's so awesome to hear!

[@erwinmeerman]

Great stuff Ed, thanks! I use the sun event for switching on all the lights in my living room, but I'm definately gonna check out the usage of helpers. Seems like a good/best practice indeed ;-)

[@SmartHomeJunkie]

Thanks Erwin! Good luck with creating these custom buttons!

[@gmecomputers]

Excellent step by step videos! Would you please help with a resolution? When I physically turn an Insteon switch on or off, the Lovelace button in HA will not update status to reflect green for on or grey for off. When the button is triggered, within HA, the Insteon switch and button work correctly. Thanks so much for your help....

[@matthewpyro]

I have the same question!!! did you figure it out?

[@gmecomputers]

@@matthewpyro Unfortunately no, this appears to be a broadly asked question with no consistent resolve. Would love to accomplish tho...

[@SchoneMarisha]

Great as usual! Thanks a lot!

[@veryshortclips2723]

Hello, question how to get the on off toggle for the automations to switch on off ?? thx

[@wan-hsiangrachelliang8128]

Great video. I just started with HA and have no coding experience in the past. By following your videos, I have no issue to set up my HA and get it up and running! One question about helper, what's the difference between button and toggle, and why you chose to use toggle instead of button in this case. Really appreciate for all of your videos!

[@SmartHomeJunkie]

A button didn't exist at the time I created this video, but I still use a toggle in these cases. Never looked into buttons.

[@anumsheraz]

Amazing. I would never have made those automation @11:19 possible without this video ! Thankyou soo much

[@SmartHomeJunkie]

Great that I could help you!

[@mlvdende]

Clear video. Installed SSH and HACS successfully and after that tried to install the custom card button. However, it does not show up in the lovelace interface. It does show up in the dashboard resources. What can be causing this?

[@SmartHomeJunkie]

I guess you might have to refresh your browser cache.

[@mlvdende]

@@SmartHomeJunkie That did the trick! thanks

[@Auld_Moaner]

Excellent as always 👍

[@SmartHomeJunkie]

Thank you Stu! Really appreciate your support! 👍🏻

[@Joseph-ko2kl]

Love your content! Could you also do this by including a physical button like an IKEA or smart things button?

[@SmartHomeJunkie]

Sure! On that case you have to create an automation that toggles the input_boolean based on the physical button. So, in the triggers section, select the physical button as a device and trigger on pushing the button.

[@erkanbayir]

it helps me a lot, thank you mate

[@smartifi_egypt]

Firstly thank you so much for the tutorial, I just want to discuss that instead of a helper we can just rely on the state of the power plug and create one automation to turn it on and off according to weekdays, and simple button to toggle the power plug and they will keep in sync thanks to state

[@smartifi_egypt]

I want to ask you or anyone reading this, what if I want to make motion light automation but if I clicked the button in dashboard the automation stop

[@SmartHomeJunkie]

I wouldn’t know at the moment. Have to think about it.

[@MichaelAlderete]

It’s a good point to not rush to complex solutions when simple ones will work. Relying on the state of the entity would certainly work for simpler automation scenarios, like the example used in this video. But as the complexity of the behavior you want to build increases, it's really hard to rely on just entity state, especially when you need to hold onto values more interesting than on/off. I'm thinking of the ridiculously complex template entity I have to calculate my electricity rate at any given time of the day. I also have complex behaviors I want to have happen at different times of the day to best manage my power usage when the rate is highest. My "simple" version of the behaviors so far uses four input_numbers, four input_datetimes, four input_buttons, three template sensors, and a half-dozen automations and scripts. And it's *braindead.* It doesn't handle presence (either at the house level, home/away, or at the room level, for the various A/C units throughout the house), changes to the thermostat, or the change from "summer" to "winter" energy pricing. (Which, yay, happens in 8 days!) So, yes, the system illustrated here _could_ be implemented just with entity state. But if I just want to turn lights on/off at a specific time of day, I don't need a smart home for that. I assume anyone using Home Assistant is chasing something more interesting and sophisticated. (Otherwise, what's wrong with HomeKit, or the other easier platforms?) What's important in this video is that the _lessons_ here can be used to handle much more complex behavior, behavior that could never be implemented just with entity states.

[@akram1402]

I love your tutorials, I learnt alot of things. Just one question, how can I add add a shortcut for a dashboard in the sidebar?.. all my dashboard are in the Overview tab

[@SmartHomeJunkie]

Thx! You can add dashboards under Configuration->Dashboards

[@RonnyBakker-i7j]

Hi Ed, I followed your tutorial and it works perfect! thanks! Just one thing i'm not figuring out. I have an automation and helper for my shutters. (rolluiken buitenkant) and i have two helpers and automations. One for all the way down, and one for closing them half. Is there a way for the automation when i press the button for closing them half way down to let the automation that closes them all the way down to know they are half way down. So if they are closed half way down and i want to clse them the automation know they are already down and now it needs to open? so i guess a way to let helper "close all the way" trigger to on when the helper "close half" is pressed. (snap je wat ik bedoel?)

[@NielsNL68]

thanks for showing this. Before your talked about the trigger_id's i was afraid you needed 3 automations, but i learned about it here first. Based on this; would you not recommend combining automation 1 and 2 and use an other trigger_id like time_trigger_on and use that to trigger the boolean helper entity?

[@SmartHomeJunkie]

I think you can do that too. I try to keep the tutorials as simple as possible so that viewers do not get overwhelmed.

[@dennisbaauw]

I was wondering if its also possible to control your mediaplayer so I can use buttons to toggle on/off and turn up/down the music or even swap channels.

[@vaughanza]

Hi Once again thanks for another great video. Do you mind doing another we use a button card to stop an automation from announcing ( Over Google speaker TTS ) that the door is open. May button can be some an hour or longer. It not on or off, its showing open or closed. I am using trigger IDs in my automation Thanks again

[@benjamin6642]

Thank you Ed.. that was very helpful ;)

[@SmartHomeJunkie]

Thanks for your message. Great to hear!

[@bmmaia81]

Hi, your videos helped me a lot. many thanks. I have a question that maybe you can point me to the correct direction. I've created a custom card to open a third party app (reolink) which work fine. but I cannot use it with any automation, as it is not recognized as a button or an entity. Is there any way to work this out. I've tried with this input boolen but the problem remains.

[@fibranijevidra]

Nicely explained, but I would like to see some more practical examples or just an idea of scenario 2, when automation triggers another automation. Home automation is fun to play with, but I somehow am missing practical usecase scenarios. At the end, I just enjoy telemetry and analytics.

[@MichaelAlderete]

Agree that it's hard to think about these complex automations without concrete examples, "real world" behaviors you want to create and control. Coming up with reasonably "real" scenarios that work for many people is pretty challenging though, especially one that involves a complex chain of automations. Even the "simple" scenario used here involves state (in the form of the input_boolean), user interface display (the custom button), and behavior that changes depending on the state (the complex automation). Expanding that to something more involved is daunting, but without a real world scenario, understanding the whats and whys of an implementation would be really difficult. If you have something in mind for your own smart home, request it! It's great input, and even if Smart Home Junkie can't do a video customized specifically for your scenario, it might at least inform future videos. (You can see how he's building up a library of modular lessons when he refers back to older videos.) Personally, I tried to create a complex set of automations and UI controls to control my Pi-hole instances, in particular to disable them for a short period of time with automatic re-enablement. That was years ago, and the Pi-hole integration was less mature. My implementation was a mess, and I could never get it to work right. (I decided to use another tool.) But this strategy of combining helpers, buttons, and automations would work well to do something like that, I think.

[@TyPaff]

I can give a good more complex and useful example I am currently working on. I have a barn I have converted to my home office and only need lights/monitors/door lock/heating during office hours, but have everything on smart triggers. Right now I have two scenes, one for and one for each with their own button on Lovelace. What I am working on thanks to the video is to set automatic start times, but manual off times as my work day is variable, in addition to a manual button to turn off the automation on days when I am not in the office. The automation will signal a second automation to either turn the heater on or leave off depending on that morning's forecast. A single button to toggle everything and and a toggle to activate/deactivate timed automation.

[@blissweb]

I have a prime example for a fairly complex automation. It will probably be useful for lots of people in future. I'm pairing a smart switch with a smart bulb. So all switches will turn the bulbs on and off without any need for internet or servers. So with this in mind, I want to have other switches which control the room/house theme, maybe what color/brightness for each room. When the scene is triggered I need to go through each light and make sure that its physically switched on and connected before changing the color. I imagine the techniques in this video, although not identical, will come in very handy in trying to program it.

[@TheDiabeticWay]

Thank you for this! Have you any videos on setting up a Shelly Button1 ?

[@MarcoBassini]

Hi. First of all, compliments for the videos. I did all passages and it works fine. Only a question: In my dashboard the icon of the switch is big like the page. How is possible to reduce, like in your video? Thanks

[@SmartHomeJunkie]

Thx. It's probably because the view type in your dashboard is set to Panel.

[@MarcoBassini]

@@SmartHomeJunkie Thank you for the answer. It's true!!

[@SGabriels]

Great tutorial. I've watched it a few times but I'm still missing something. Your Automation1 will activate the helper which in turn activate Automation2 to turn the lights On. But, who will turn the lights Off? Do we have to use the button to do it? Does not make sence!

[@wa8khp-468]

I am missing something.... I have the HACS Custom Button card installed, followed your instructions creating HELPER, added Custom Button Card to Dashboard with the YAML code but I can't get the button to function- will not change color green to gray etc. Is there some DASHBOARD RESOUECE, URL or other Java script that I need to add? Thanks David

[@SmartHomeJunkie]

It should work out of the box. You might also want to check the new mushroom template card. You can change the color of the icon on that card too.

[@PapaVentrex]

I just had to same and checked the topics. Found out my button was gone after a refresh. Recreated it and that fixed it for me

[@n.r.2258]

Can I connect a helper direct to a script, to „fire“ a script, without an automation in between ?

[@SmartHomeJunkie]

I don't think you can. You can fire a script with a button though by calling a service.

[@n.r.2258]

@@SmartHomeJunkie Only problem is, I have no indication …. the helper will switch its status so you have an indication of the result .

[@SmartHomeJunkie]

@@n.r.2258 Indeed. That's what this video is about. Having an indicator what the status is of the outcome of the automation.

[@n.r.2258]

@@SmartHomeJunkie It's just a really inconvenient way to execute a script via an automation under call of a service, just to get a signalization. But if there is no other way .... Thanks for the answer.

[@SmartHomeJunkie]

@@n.r.2258 I don't think it's inconvenient at all. Think about the possibilities to chain automations using only helper statuses. This basically means that you can create specific automations for specific tasks and fire them one after each other in a chain so that you only have to maintain the actions in one place instead of doubling them. It's (sort of) the same as object oriented programming.

[@WhoCares2509]

I tried to use this method in conjunction with an Alexa routine, but apparently it's only possible to trigger those with binary sensors of the types window, door, garage door and opening. Perhaps you have a way to create a binary sensor that is linked to an input boolean? Thanks

[@SmartHomeJunkie]

Hi! I never tried that, but maybe it will work if you create a script in Home Assistant that toggles the input_boolean? I do not own an Alexa myself, so I cannot test if a script can be called through Alexa, but as far as I found this should be possible.

[@WhoCares2509]

@@SmartHomeJunkie Thanks for your reply. Sorry, I wasn't clear about what I was hoping to achieve. The Alexa will find devices on your network if you do the complicated initial setup involved or you have a Nabu Casa subscription. Home Assistant devices are in that list of found devices. You can then set up a routine on the Alexa to be triggered by a binary sensor in Home Assistant. So really, all I am wondering is if it is possible to create a binary sensor in Home Assistant that mimics the behavior of an input boolean helper. That way we could trigger Alexa routines with the same method you outlined in this video.

[@SmartHomeJunkie]

@@WhoCares2509 Ahhh! I "think" it might be possible by creating a custom sensor in your configuration.yaml, but you have to test it. Interesting thought indeed!

[@robert.wigley]

You can create a template binary sensor based on the state of the input boolean.

[@WhoCares2509]

@@robert.wigley Thanks Robert, that is exactly what I ended up doing, and yet, inexplicably, it does nothing. I can even see the sensor in the Alexa app changing "realtime", and the "sensor" is available as a routine trigger, but it does jack sh!t. I'm just about done with this crap. Is it Home Assistant??? Is it the Alexa App??? Nobody knows!!! Let's spin the fucking wheel...

[@matthewpyro]

Is there a way to update the button based on the state of the scene? for example if the button activates a scene with the kitchen lights on and someone physically switches the kitchen light off it will update the state of the button to off?

[@SmartHomeJunkie]

You can do this only if the lightbulb keeps getting power. If it's disconnected from power, it might also be possible to check on the availability of the light.

[@gmecomputers]

@@SmartHomeJunkie Checking the state of the light, when physically switched, from off to on and on to off will push a notification for me. Now, just need it to update the the status of the Lovelace button in HA.

[@SmartHomeJunkie]

@@gmecomputers It might be an idea to use Mushroom Template Cards for that. You can create a template that shows a different value based on the status of the lights.

[@stebal68]

Hello, first thanks for your videos, very good, i have a door sensor in my garden's hut and i want to create a buttom to désactive this sensor or activate this sensor. I follow your tuto but i can't make an action to the sensor (on, off). Do you have a solution ? Thanks

[@stebal68]

i find a buttom toggle disable automation : very easy

[@SmartHomeJunkie]

This, or you can create a toggle helper and check for the state of that helper in the automation's condition.

[@squalazzo]

did you do a video on when to use scripts and when automations? or how to simplify automations by moving parts of them to scripts? and can scripts be parametric, like programming functions, so we can pass entities as parameter, for example, instead of repeating steps for each entity... thanks

[@SmartHomeJunkie]

Mastering Scripts in Home Assistant: A Comprehensive Guide kzbin.info/www/bejne/rHXCqZahn7ariM0

[@squalazzo]

@@SmartHomeJunkie thanks!

[@davidlucas1844]

Hi, I am trying to follow this video but when I get to 13:12 to add the actions I add the choose option, then I get the trigger by option but I then get No triggers have an ID set. You can set an ID using the trigger menu button. Can anyone help as Im trying to do this on the new HA no the old one.

[@SmartHomeJunkie]

In the trigger, click on the three dots and select Edit ID

[@davidlucas1844]

@@SmartHomeJunkie arch, great. thank you. Now that I appear to have that working I have an automation to turn on my heater at a certain temperature and turn off when it reaches another temperature. It worked fine all day yesterday, turning on / off throughout the day untill 7pm but not worked since. I went into the automations and it showed they've not been running for 15 hours, any reason what may stop them?

[@ivolagesreis4118]

Im keen to implement a Simple automation where just pushing a button Will open all my Shutters (they have a shelly switch on) ... But Im somehow Lost about how to properly set this up ... Im confused about the correct Way to set up

[@SmartHomeJunkie]

I guess using a call service action that closes the shutters and selecting the shutters as entities within that action should do the trick.

[@tex-ranger]

I don't have Configuration. Under Settings > Automation & Scenes, I don't have "helpers". I have: Automation, Scenes, Scripts & Blueprints. AFAIK, I am running the latest version. (One advantage of written instructions: It's much easier for the author to update as software changes).

[@SmartHomeJunkie]

See this video: The NEW Settings Menu in Home Assistant versus the Old Configuration Menu + FREE GIVE-AWAY kzbin.info/www/bejne/hp_GdX9pl7tkiaM

[@arrowayes]

Thank you

[@blissweb]

Awesome video, but its kinda depressing the amount of setup these require. Especially with almost no GUI. Once you have 500 of these setup you'd better hope you have your backups running correctly. The key takeaway for me is that with enough effort, Home Assistant can do whatever you can imagine.

[@robert.wigley]

I can't see any benefit of doing this compared to calling different scripts (which can be called from a button and an automation, can call other scripts and can run them in parallel, as well as queuing them), which I would favour over this method, as it doesn't require any additional entities (helpers) being created. I believe this is the main reason scripts exist, due to their flexibility of reusing code. Maybe I am missing something?

[@SmartHomeJunkie]

What you miss is that you cannot see the status of the outcome of the script if you do this without a helper. So, you won't be able to tell if the power is on or off from a distance in this example.Also, this way, automations reuse code too and it works a bit like the way object oriented programming works. Automations trigger automatically based on helper statuses. So you can trigger multiple automations automatically based on different helper values. With scripts you cannot do this. But the main point of this video is the feedback that you get on the button so you know what the power status of a zone is.

[@robert.wigley]

@@SmartHomeJunkie That's a good point. I hadn't thought of that. Thanks. I would agree that this method has it's use, primarily for that reason then. If the outcome state is not required, it would be cleaner to use scripts IMO.

[@SmartHomeJunkie]

@@robert.wigley Yes, totally agree, but the fact that automations trigger automatically based on a helper status in complex automation or triggert chains is also very powerful.

[@franklarsen6753]

Too complicated. Just add the phone as tracker to each person. Then zone home counts how many are at home. This will be zero when the last leaves. Simple.

[@SmartHomeJunkie]

What has this to do with this video? Did you see this one? Mastering Home Assistant: How to Verify If Everyone's Left the House kzbin.infoOe3X5wQmY5I?feature=share

[@jakomouton9004]

I receive this message HACS-Frontend -button card after download. When downloaded this will be located in '/config/www/community/button-card' After the download completes, since you are not using Lovelace in storage mode you need to manually add the resource with these settings: url: /hacsfiles/button-card/button-card.js type: module I can see the button button-card.js in www/community. I get stuck at this point as putting the above lines in configuration.yaml does not resolve the problem. I assume you need to get lovelace in storage mode for some reason but got absolutely no clue how to accomplish this and why since HA is all new to me. Thanks Ed.

[@SmartHomeJunkie]

I must say that I've never seen this message before. I've got no clue whatsoever what is going on in your setup. 🤷🏼

[@jakomouton9004]

@@SmartHomeJunkie That makes two of us !! The bottomline is that the custom button card ia not added to the Add Card list selection most likely due to the fact that HA cannot find the path to the hacsfiles. On a diffent note ......I do enjoy your video's.

[@jakomouton9004]

I added the path [ /hacsfiles/button-card/button-card.js] under Manage resources which you can find under the three dots on the Dashboard and that resolved the problem.

[@MrStian234]

@@jakomouton9004 I have gotten the same problem. Used your method, and i can find it now in the add card section. However, it states; No visual editor availabel for type costum:button-card. I am out of luck. Anyone knows something that could solve this :)

[@TyPaff]

@@MrStian234 I had this problem yesterday when I installed the clock weather card, it appears to be a HACS glitch. It didn't report the resource link to the resources depository file. I tried to add it manually but no dice. I did a sequence of deleting the card, rebooting HA, and reinstalling it, then it seemed to work. To know if HACS reported the resource correctly go to Settings>Dashboard>3-dots on upper right hand side>Resources. On that list it should show all the resource URL's that have been installed, with the addition of a ?hacstag=xxxxxxxxx serial number. If you don't see it or if the hacstag didn't get applied (that is what happened to mine) then it failed to install properly. Been having a lot of HACS repository issues this past month, that might have something to do with it.