Motion Sensors, Timers and Restoring State

@bazwilliams wrote:

I’ve a motion sensor, outdoor (colour) light and a timer configured in Home Assistant.

Basically I want the following scenario:

If motion is detected:
Record the current state of the light (colour and brightness)
Turn on the light to a specific brightness and make it white
Start a 2 minute countdown

If motion is detected whilst the existing timer is running
Reset the countdown to 2 minutes

If the countdown expires
Restore the original light state (could be a colour, or maybe off)

I have the following automation configured:

- alias: Front Garden Motion
  hide_entity: true
  initial_state: true
  trigger:
    - platform: state
      entity_id: binary_sensor.front_garden_motion_motion
      from: 'off'
      to: 'on'
  condition:
    - condition: numeric_state
      entity_id: sensor.front_garden_motion_light_level
      below: 500
  action:
    - service: timer.start
      entity_id: timer.garden_light

- alias: Front Garden Light Timer Started
  trigger:
  - platform: event
    event_type: timer.started
    event_data:
      entity_id: timer.garden_light
  action:
  - service: scene.create
    data:
      scene_id: garden_before
      snapshot_entities:
      - light.garden
  - service: hue.hue_activate_scene
    data:
      group_name: Garden
      scene_name: Bright

- alias: Front Garden Light Timer Stopped
  trigger:
  - platform: event
    event_type: timer.finished
    event_data:
      entity_id: timer.garden_light
  - platform: event
    event_type: timer.cancelled
    event_data:
      entity_id: timer.garden_light
  action:
  - service: scene.turn_on
    data:
      entity_id: scene.garden_before

According to the documentation (https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/timer/#service-timerstart) this should work fine since the timer will be restarted at its original value.

However it appears Timers are in fact broken (https://github.com/home-assistant/home-assistant/issues/12013) as when service.start is invoked on a timer it actually doesn’t restart.

To get the countdown timer to reset to 2 minutes I could instead have the following action:

  action:
    - service: timer.cancel
      entity_id: timer.garden_light
    - service: timer.start
      entity_id: timer.garden_light

But this has the downside of triggering a state change and an event which means my scene.create action where I attempt to record the original light state is now overwritten by the ‘bright’ state.

I did try introducing a condition in the ‘Brighten the Garden’ automation by ensuring the timer has remained in an idle state for 2 seconds before invoking scene.create, but this has no effect since the condition will fail as the timer will now be ‘active’.

- alias: Brighten the Garden
  hide_entity: true
  initial_state: true
  condition:
    - condition: state
      entity_id: timer.garden_light
      state: "idle"
      for:
        seconds: 2
  trigger:
    - platform: state
      entity_id: timer.garden_light
      from: "idle"
      to: "active"
  action:
    - service: scene.create
      data:
        scene_id: garden_before
        snapshot_entities:
          - light.garden
    - service: hue.hue_activate_scene
      data:
        group_name: Garden
        scene_name: Bright

So… I’m kind of stuck - I can’t implement my above scenario which stores the existing state of a scene. I can only really set the light to an explicit state at the beginning and end of a timer and call ‘cancel and start’ one after the other.

Can anyone else suggest a method to achieve the scenario outlined at the beginning?

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