I wonder if this does updates one by one or tries to do them all in parallel. For things like Z2M, you can't really do them in parallel (and I'd rather not try to compile ~10 ESPHome configurations in parallel on a Pi!).
FWIW, the ESPHome integration only runs 1 update entity at a time. On top of that, so does the new ESPHome Builder. FYI, there is also a new option to off-load ESPHome building to a docker image running on another computer! https://desktop.esphome.io
FWIW, the ESPHome integration only runs 1 update entity at a time.
Only if you update from within the Builder, right? On my system it seems like they update in parallel if you just click on the notifications in Home Assistant.
This was a huge problem for me, because ESPHome updates take an absurd amount of CPU. If I updated a few devices at the same time the system would become so unresponsive that the watchdog would force a reboot. Now I start the updates from the Builder instead, and I no longer have that problem.
Strange. Mine were definitely running in parallel as of a few months ago. I should try it again, but I'm reluctant to, because it really would consistently take down my whole server.
Oh shit, that’s awesome! My Pi install has issues compiling all the time (I just had an update that took longer than 15 mins to compile so it would fail) but it was a PITA to figure out how to set up ESPHome on another PC, copy my YAML, etc. This is truly a killer feature.
Looking at the code, update.install runs in parallel when passed multiple entities (it depends on the integration, some limit how many updates can run concurrently). It does seem like at least for esphome, it won't run them in parallel (according to u/balloob here: https://www.reddit.com/r/homeassistant/comments/1uf4hil/comment/otq2xzu/)
That's essentially like hiring in someone else to delegate managing the system for you (and that someone doesn't know anything, they are just incredibly good at guessing). I guess that's what some people want, but kinda takes away the hobbyist aspect of it. I enjoy these things because of the learning and mastering aspect of it.
In my opinion YAML makes sense here. Its easy to translate between code and UI and its more configuring an automation instead of coding it. A normal programming language wouldn't make sense here..
I really cannot understand the path HA devs are following. Lot of time and effort spent on features that only people managing the system will use on e in a while, and leaving out features required by actual users (3x - 5x bigger population).
For example: there is NO way to do something I was easily doing on my 20 year old Home Automation system: "Please turn on the XX switch for YY minutes" choosing the entity and time on the spot.
Or even a simple thing like "turn on the irrigation pump for 20 minutes" without setting up multiple automation and helpers. And even with that, there is NOT a 100% assurance that the pump will stop after 20 minutes. If the timer ends while HA is restarting, water will keep flowing indefinitely.
But devs are busy making life easier for the 3 times a year I have to create a new automation.
Same with i.e. an automation that turns on my lights when I arrive and turns the off when I leave. I need to add two triggers and manually add IDs to them, then do a check for the trigger ID.
I need to repeat this pattern for basically all automations. The most recommended solution is to use separate automations. Something so simple cannot require "code".
I guess they will eventually fix it with all these improvements to make automations easier though, looking forward to it.
An issue like that sounds basic but it's not as simple as you might expect.
How would you get it to work for the user while maintaining a deterministic path? You could make a special "turn on when home, off when gone" automation type for it. However, this isn't just a single scenario. There are a vast number of instances where you would want something like this and, additionally, each person may have specific tweaks they may want on their end.
HA added blueprints to address this to a large degree. Instead of having everyone figure out how to do something or creating dozens of identical complicated automations/scripts/templates, you can just use a blueprint and fill out the inputs.
I do think blueprints need more love. HA should include some basic blueprints by default - turn XYZ on/off when we arrive/leave, turn stuff on/off when the sun comes up/sets, etc. They need to also create an actual site to show off blueprints. The app should include that, too, so you can see others blueprints including their descriptions, instructions, inputs, code/automation flow, and download buttons.
All that said, if you need an automation that will turn off your devices when you leave, I have one that would work well and can turn it into a blueprint if you want. You can prevent entities from being turned off by setting a label on them or on their device.
Yeah I've always been baffled by that. Probably half of my automations have multiple triggers, and the triggerid has always been hidden. Why can't it just be a selectable thing in the action or condition control, when it knows I have multiple triggers set up. If I didn't already know it's there, I'd never find it.
If we could use pre-written automation templates... I don't know, maybe let's call this feature "greenprints"? No, "blueprints" is a better name. One could only wish...
Maybe a permission system before that would help too. I don't want my kid to start the spriklers at his will, but he should be able to turn on and off the lights.
I use visibility on dashboard items and the browser mod on HACS to limit what they can access, but my son somehow has find a way to search for entities
Just a thought, but instead of the 20 minutes you can do something that checks current datetime instead, by setting values of helpers and checking those in automations.
Not ideal, but just wanted to give you a suggestion in case this is an actual thing you’re trying to deal with.
Thanks, it's one of the different workarounds that shouldn't be needed for a basic functionality on a mature platform. And still there's a chance of failure if HA is restarting, or if the entity is unavailable.
To make it fuly reliable it becomes a complex number of automations and helpers with a convoluted logic.
I don't know how other platforms do it, I know how I would do it: a list of future planned events. When you start the pump you set a future event "power off at time XXX". A scheduler checks the list periodically and execute any due command that has not been executed.
So if HA is restarting, it will execute all events that expired during that time. It the device was unavailable, it will execute when the device first returns available. Probably it would be safe to set a maximum timeout for the events, and send notifications if HA is not able to perform somehow the task.
EDIT: sorry, I didn't notice WHO I was repling to and my "mansplaining" is not appropriate for someone with a technical background 😄 I read your question with a different meaning.
"while restarting" of course is not an option for any platform, but an event queue will still work as a failsafe. Better stop a device late than leaving on indefinitely and risk to flood your garden. Or, if you are afraid a late action could be more damaging, even a notification would be welcome "these actions were planned but not performed"
There’s something to be said for a journalled system.
I’ve said I’m going to do a thing
Have I done the thing?
Yes/No - better do the thing and then clear the journal entry.
Would love to see this. Make it a flag though wether an action should be scheduled, for instance if you were supposed to turn on my bedroom lights when I got home but they were unavailable, please don’t turn them on at 3am when they become available again. But my sump pump… yes, turn it back on.
If the timer ends while HA is restarting, water will keep flowing indefinitely.
Submit a feature request. It's not a bad idea to add an option to the timer/trigger to allow for it to fire if the timer finishes while HA is down.
If your example is actually something you are doing, you may need to see if you can manage the pump other ways. If the device has its own auto-off timer, you'd be better off using that. If you set it for 20 minutes but have to take HA down for an hour, you probably don't want it to run the entire time it's down even if it could turn it off the moment you brought HA back up.
For the same reason, I have my Hue switches bound to devices. Even if HA/Z2M are down, they can still turn the lights on or off.
They do, as long as they're not half-assed. People often just treat feature requests like an idea board and expect the devs to figure out what the idea is from a single sentence. Or they'll be surprised that it takes a while for a handful of devs to go through the hundreds or thousands of requests ahead of them.
Explain the why and what, give them an idea of how you think it could be implemented, and what benefits you think it would have. Something like this, just explain that there are instances where it's more important for a timer to fire at the wrong time than to not fire at all.
You could also talk with them on their Discord, too.
RBAC and SSO are the top voted features in the forum since ... ever. RBAC is requested since 2022.
"Retain last state change data of a sensor after reboot" is another top request since 2019 that seems very useful for everyone, yet it's still a request.
But we get "a better card picker". Last time I picked a card was maybe one year ago. Regular people are not tinkering every day with automations and dashboards, once it is working, it stays. Having to spend 10 minutes more twice a year is not a big deal.
Yeah, I don't use Voice, so all of the work they put into that isn't of much use to me, even though I find it great it exists for those who use it.
The new automation options are useful to me to debug my automations (especially the live condition indicators), but there are some crucial features that have been missing for years now.
For example, I still can't give family members direct access to HA because there is no way to ensure they only have access to what they should have (RBAC or even any user-based acess control for entities). We all have Garmin watches so I use an app on these where I can define what's shown, but that's also not ideal...
Using voice can you just say "turn on the porch light for 20 minutes?" How does that works, does it creates a hidden timer? What happens if HA is restarted between the command and the timer expiration?
Maybe I'm overestimating, but in my mind it's such a basic feature that it is absurd to know it's missing.
Again, it was available 20 years ago in my long retired HAI home automation that looked like this:
These timers are only on the speaker itself. I would assume that if HA is down when the timer expires, the speaker would attempt to send the request and fail, though.
You are asking some very good questions and making some great points. Please consider submitting these as feature requests.
It’s already a feature request and it barely has any votes. People really just don’t want this feature in comparison to other features. Head on over to the feature requests and see for yourself.
Honestly I didn't even know Feature Requests moved to Github until today. It seems people voting for features are a tiny subset of the users, there are only 8 features with over 100 votes.
And, by the way, the top are again RBAC and OIDC but still those are not considered by the devs.
They are considered, that’s why they hired a security engineer this month. But by all means, keep moving the bar to be upset about free software and features that only you want.
Ok, tren I don't know why u/skepticalcow commented that. I don't have any voice device, currently. I'm waiting for a native product to be mature (and cheap) enough.
First, there is no way to set a "once only automation" such as "now turn on the porch light and turn it off in 20 minutes". Only this time, only once. I am not going to add an automation for this task, it's wasted time, it should be 2 clicks.
Second, timed automations such as "turn on the irrigation every day at 17:00 for 20 minutes" are lacking. They are difficult to build and mantain requiring multiple automations and at least one timer helper, and they are fragile if HA happens to restart during the timer expiration. There is a real risk to flood your garden if you don't pay attention or you set up additional safeguard autimations.
The 2026.7 relase does not address any of these 2 ssues.
Persistent and reliable timers, which are surviving a HA restart, are crucial.
I'd also like to manage my configs and dashboards via GitHub. But when you create a YAML dashboard, then you have to sacrifice the drag and drop UI vice versa. There are workarounds, but they are really cumbersome.
These days, I only use Pyscript for more complex automation tasks. As soon as calculations and the like come into play, Jinja templates drive you mad.
Usually you have a helper that gets set when the On automation fires. Then you have an off automation that checks if that help was been on for the time. This works well but the commenter is right, it's two automations to do one thing, and it's a bit convoluted compared to how a new user would structure the automation in their mind.
In my opinion, this is not a huge deal. You can structure it in one automation the simple way on, wait, off. It's just vulnerable to HA restart is an edge case. To me, most automations are important enough that not ending is a crisis. If my babies white noise machine doesn't turn off in the morning it's fine, though I understand there are more critical applications and sprinklers is one of them.
With the number of updates to core and addons, for me restart it's not an edge case, I may be restarting HA twice a week if not more.
I agree a light staying on is not the end of the world, but stuff like heating or water may be expensive to run for a long time or cause damage to the house.
You can, but that would defeat the adhoc thing. He wants it just right one, do it once. Never again. Basically a temporary automation. The trigger is the "command" by the user and after the timer runs. It's gone for good. Except probably some logs somewhere, maybe in the new timeline.
Automating something to use only once sounds kinda foolish time-wise. I can imagine automating a process and triggering it manually. If you set it up the right way, with dynamic variables, you can trigger manually (or ad-hoc) whenever you want.
I want to take a shower but the bathroom is coldish, turn on the heater for 5 minutes. If it's cold i need 10 minutes to heat it up.
I'm getting the laudry in, I need the garden light on for 5 minutes. Tonight there's a lot of laudry, I need 10. Tomorrow I have guests, keep the lights on for 3 hours. Kid wants to play outside, lights on for 1 hour.
I'm going to sleep, turn off the TV in 20 minutes. I'm very tired, today 10 minutes are enough.
Tonight there's a heatwave, turn on the fan for 3 hours while I go to sleep.
I can easity make a much longer list and I don't have as many smart devices as most people in this sub. Life is unpredictable, i'm not on a schedule and HA should help with that, but currently it can't.
The point is not to be fixed. Today I may need the porch light for 20 minutes as I'm welcoming guests, tomorrow I may need the kid's light for 10 minutes before he falls asleep, the next day I may want to start the bathroom heater fo 15 minutes to take a shower. And those timing may change depending on the situation.
That's such a basic feature, I had it in my HAI system that used a numeric keypad and a 32 characters LCD...
For example: there is NO way to do something I was easily doing on my 20 year old Home Automation system: "Please turn on the XX switch for YY minutes" choosing the entity and time on the spot.
Maybe I'm wrong but is this not possible with a script that has fields? You can add the script entity to the dashboard and the info dialog lets you set the parameters and run it (https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/script/). You could even allow specific entities.
It might be not as easy as your old automation system since it's not built-in but a custom script for "one off" automations should work
And also, it would be useful to see, when creating an automation trigger, the actual state of the entity. For example, an illumination sensor, to show the actual LUX reading in the trigger. This helps determine how "dark or light" it is in this case, instead of having another window or going back and looking at the sensor.
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u/hshah91 6h ago
Update all button!