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Best way to trigger automation with my return home? (sh.itjust.works)

submitted 3 weeks ago by Lemmee@sh.itjust.works to c/homeassistant@lemmy.world

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I have a few old automations that are designed to unlock my front door, or open my garage door, depending on how I leave. If I ride my bike or car, it opens my garage, if I leave via front door, it opens the front door. Pretty simple. Except!!! I did this in pieces, so it's 2 separate automations. One detects my phone entering the "home zone", the other detects an event firing (iOS triggered the event via 'shortcuts')

There is now "zone based" automations, and there is also my "person entity". So the way I see it, I have 3 different ways to tell when I come home:

My phone's gps enters the 'home zone'
My HA 'person' state changes from 'away' to 'home'
My phone's shortcut app fires an event that is detected.

I feel like #1 and #2 are the same, no? I only have one device linked to my person entity, and it's my phone. Is there any difference in this case? Is there a preferred choice?

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[–] Cyber@feddit.uk 7 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (1 children)

I have multiple zones: home and almost-home (same center coordinates, just larger diameter)

This allows the house to "get ready" before someone is actually home, ie trigger lights to come on earlier.

It also helps with random GPS jumps.

Then, when the wifi connection is slow (maybe low phone battery) and people are literally outside the door, there's no awkward pauses before someone actually "arrives".

I also have zones for our work places, intending to be used as a double-check, ie not-home isn't usually good enough, I want the house to know we're all at work and then the internal house cameras come on, etc.

I also have a "visitors" flag, so that if friends / family are in and we leave, then the TV and lights don't turn off and they're not attacked by the laser robots...

Also, (from memory) the person entity can be a combo of GPS and ping sensors to ensure it's a correct reading

[–] Lemmee@sh.itjust.works 1 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

I do like the idea of different triggers for different zones. Especially zones for commonly visited locations (work, gym, grocery, etc). I really don't have many automations that trigger by my presence/absence, as all my lights are pretty much automatic. I like the house to look like I'm home, even if I'm not.

This has brought up another issue I have been battling - my 'home' zone refuses to be resized... I shrink it down, and literally the next time I leave, it triggers at the same damn spot, and when I open my config, it shows the same size circle. I think I just need to do some cleanup and updates to my system. It's been a while.

[–] Cyber@feddit.uk 1 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Yeah, the home zone is somewhat... different Zones

I do most of my config in yaml and all the zones are configured in a separate file, however, the home zone has (had? I've not checked in years) to be configured in configuration.yaml under the homeassistant: section.

You should be able to do something like:

homeassistant:
  latitude: 12.3356
  longitude: 1.23456
  radius: 50

If you're configuring zones from the UI, I think editing the file should still work.

[–] Mpeach45@lemmy.world 1 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

I'm new to HA so let me make sure I understand. Are you saying that setting up zones in the UI isn't enough to get them to work?

[–] Cyber@feddit.uk 1 points 2 weeks ago

I'm from ye olden times, when everything was done in the yaml configuration files - so I prefer that approach.

The zones you create from the UI, work fine.

It's just that the default "home" zone appears to have some quirks that can only be set from configuration.yaml