Automation Trigger

What are triggers

Triggers are what starts the processing of an automation rule. When any of the automation’s triggers becomes true (trigger fires), Open Peer Power will validate the conditions, if any, and call the action.

Event trigger

Fires when an event is being received. Events are the raw building blocks of Open Peer Power. You can match events on just the event name or also require specific event data to be present.

Events can be fired by integrations or via the API. There is no limitation to the types. A list of built-in events can be found here.

automation:
  trigger:
    platform: event
    event_type: MY_CUSTOM_EVENT
    # optional
    event_data:
      mood: happy

Open Peer Power trigger

Fires when Open Peer Power starts up or shuts down.

automation:
  trigger:
    platform: openpeerpower
    # Event can also be 'shutdown'
    event: start

MQTT trigger

Fires when a specific message is received on given MQTT topic. Optionally can match on the payload being sent over the topic. The default payload encoding is ‘utf-8’. For images and other byte payloads use encoding: '' to disable payload decoding completely.

automation:
  trigger:
    platform: mqtt
    topic: living_room/switch/ac
    # Optional
    payload: "on"
    encoding: "utf-8"

Numeric state trigger

Fires when numeric value of an entity’s state crosses a given threshold. On state change of a specified entity, attempts to parse the state as a number and fires if value is changing from above to below or from below to above the given 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

    # If given, will trigger when condition has been for X time, can also use days and milliseconds.
    for:
      hours: 1
      minutes: 10
      seconds: 5

Listing above and below together means the numeric_state has to be between the two values. In the example above, the trigger would fire if a numeric_state goes to 17.1-24.9 (from 17 or below, or 25 or above).

The for: can also be specified as HH:MM:SS like this:

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

    # If given, will trigger when condition has been for X time.
    for: "01:10:05"

You can also use templates in the for option.

automation:
  trigger:
    platform: numeric_state
    entity_id:
      - sensor.temperature_1
      - sensor.temperature_2
    above: 80
    for:
      minutes: "{{ states('input_number.high_temp_min')|int }}"
      seconds: "{{ states('input_number.high_temp_sec')|int }}"
  action:
    service: persistent_notification.create
    data_template:
      message: >
        {{ trigger.to_state.name }} too high for {{ trigger.for }}!

The for template(s) will be evaluated when an entity changes as specified.

State trigger

Fires when the state of any of given entities changes. If only entity_id is given trigger will fire for all state changes, even if only state attributes change.

The values you see in your overview will often not be the same as the actual state of the entity. For instance, the overview may show `Connected` when the underlying entity is actually `on`. You should check the state of the entity by looking in the _States_ menu under _Developer tools_.

You can also use templates in the for option.

The for template(s) will be evaluated when an entity changes as specified.

Use quotes around your values for `from` and `to` to avoid the YAML parser interpreting values as booleans.

Sun trigger

Sunset / Sunrise trigger

Fires when the sun is setting or rising, i.e., when the sun elevation reaches 0°.

An optional time offset can be given to have it fire a set time before or after the sun event (e.g., 45 minutes before sunset).

Since the duration of twilight is different throughout the year, it is recommended to use [sun elevation triggers][sun_elevation_trigger] instead of `sunset` or `sunrise` with a time offset to trigger automations during dusk or dawn.

automation:
  trigger:
    platform: sun
    # Possible values: sunset, sunrise
    event: sunset
    # Optional time offset. This example will trigger 45 minutes before sunset.
    offset: "-00:45:00"

Sun elevation trigger

Sometimes you may want more granular control over an automation than simply sunset or sunrise and specify an exact elevation of the sun. This can be used to layer automations to occur as the sun lowers on the horizon or even after it is below the horizon. This is also useful when the “sunset” event is not dark enough outside and you would like the automation to run later at a precise solar angle instead of the time offset such as turning on exterior lighting. For most automations intended to run during dusk or dawn, a number between 0° and -6° is suitable; -4° is used in this example:

automation:
  alias: "Exterior Lighting on when dark outside"
  trigger:
    platform: numeric_state
    entity_id: sun.sun
    value_template: "{{ state_attr('sun.sun', 'elevation') }}"
    # Can be a positive or negative number
    below: -4.0
  action:
    service: switch.turn_on
    entity_id: switch.exterior_lighting

If you want to get more precise, start with the US Naval Observatory tool which will help you estimate what the solar elevation will be at any specific time. Then from this, you can select from the defined twilight numbers.

Although the actual amount of light depends on weather, topography and land cover, they are defined as:

Civil twilight: 0° > Solar angle > -6°

This is what is meant by twilight for the average person: Under clear weather conditions, civil twilight approximates the limit at which solar illumination suffices for the human eye to clearly distinguish terrestrial objects. Enough illumination renders artificial sources unnecessary for most outdoor activities.
Nautical twilight: -6° > Solar angle > -12°
Astronomical twilight: -12° > Solar angle > -18°

A very thorough explanation of this is available in the Wikipedia article about the Twilight.

You can also use templates in the for option.

The for template(s) will be evaluated when the value_template becomes true.

Rendering templates with time (`now()`) is dangerous as trigger templates are only updated based on entity state changes.

As an alternative, providing you include the sensor time in your configuration, you can use the following template:

automation:
  trigger:
    platform: template
    value_template: "{{ (states.sensor.time.last_changed - states.YOUR.ENTITY.last_changed).total_seconds() > 300 }}"

which will evaluate to True if YOUR.ENTITY changed more than 300 seconds ago.

Time trigger

The time trigger is configured to fire once at a specific point in time each day.

automation:
  trigger:
    platform: time
    # Military time format. This trigger will fire at 3:32 PM
    at: "15:32:00"

Time pattern trigger

With the time pattern trigger, you can match if the hour, minute or second of the current time matches a specific value. You can prefix the value with a / to match whenever the value is divisible by that number. You can specify * to match any value (when using the web interface this is required, the fields cannot be left empty).

automation:
  trigger:
    platform: time_pattern
    # Matches every hour at 5 minutes past whole
    minutes: 5

automation 2:
  trigger:
    platform: time_pattern
    # Trigger once per minute during the hour of 3
    hours: "3"
    minutes: "*"

automation 3:
  trigger:
    platform: time_pattern
    # You can also match on interval. This will match every 5 minutes
    minutes: "/5"

Do not prefix numbers with a zero - using `'00'` instead of '0' for example will result in errors.

Webhook trigger

Webhook trigger fires when a web request is made to the webhook endpoint: /api/webhook/<webhook_id>. This endpoint does not require authentication besides knowing the webhook id. You can either send encoded form or JSON data, available in the template as either trigger.json or trigger.data. URL query parameters are available in the template as trigger.query.

automation:
  trigger:
    platform: webhook
    webhook_id: some_hook_id

You could run the above automation by sending a POST HTTP request to http://your-open-peer-power:8123/api/webhook/some_hook_id. An example with no data sent to a SSL/TLS secured installation and using the command-line curl program is curl -d "" https://your-open-peer-power:8123/api/webhook/some_hook_id.

Zone trigger

Zone trigger fires 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. This includes GPS Logger, the OwnTracks platform and the iCloud platform.

Geolocation trigger

Geolocation trigger fires when an entity is appearing in or disappearing from a zone. Entities that are created by a Geolocation platform support reporting GPS coordinates. Because entities are generated and removed by these platforms automatically, the entity id normally cannot be predicted. Instead, this trigger requires the definition of a source, which is directly linked to one of the Geolocation platforms.

automation:
  trigger:
    platform: geo_location
    source: nsw_rural_fire_service_feed
    zone: zone.bushfire_alert_zone
    # Event is either enter or leave
    event: enter # or "leave"

Multiple triggers

It is possible to specify multiple triggers for the same rule. To do so just prefix the first line of each trigger with a dash (-) and indent the next lines accordingly. Whenever one of the triggers fires, processing of your automation rule begins.

automation:
  trigger:
    # first trigger
    - platform: time_pattern
      minutes: 5
      # our second trigger is the sunset
    - platform: sun
      event: sunset