Automations: Single rules
Single rules
The Single rules tab lists the rules. A collapsed row shows the rule’s icon tile, its name, the device path (the condition icons, an arrow and the action icons), a status pill, the on/off switch and a chevron. A click on the row expands it, and the icon tile collapses it again. The switch does not expand the row.
The expanded card shows the live bars, the three columns When all of these apply, Then and Flow, and the trigger strip. In the card head, Test runs every action of the rule once, in order. Edit opens the editor. A rule that is being edited shows neither button.
Rule editor
Edit opens the rule as sentence rows on desktop. Each condition and each action is one row, with its field labels, and the Flow column holds the cooldown, the run mode and Record history.
The footer has Delete rule on the left, and Discard and Done on the right. Discard restores the rule as it was when you pressed Edit, so nothing you changed in the editor stays. Done keeps the changes and leaves the editor. Changes are not saved to the device until you save the document.
The rule editor has four parts.
- When all of these apply lists the conditions. All of them must hold for the rule to trigger. Above and below carry an up and a down arrow. A balance condition shows its Hysteresis directly in the card, a new one starts with 5 in the unit of its field (5 W for power). A time window and a sun window also take days of the month, 1 to 31, next to the weekdays. Without a chosen day the window applies every day. Like the weekdays, the day on which the window starts counts. A condition on an entity or a topic has the comparison no new values. It is met when the last message is older than the minutes you set. If no message has arrived since the service started, the time counts from the start of the service.
- Then lists the actions that run on a trigger.
- Flow sets the Cooldown after triggering (s), the time a rule waits after a trigger before it may trigger again, the Run mode and Record history.
- Repeat is the Repeat segment of the run mode. It shows Every (s) while met, which makes the rule send its actions again while its conditions keep holding. Once sends them once per trigger. Repeat must be at least the minimum interval for commands (see Settings). The repeat is off for a rule with a toggle action, because every repeat would flip the state back.
Action cards
Each action is a card with the icon of its kind. Switch device under + Action opens the device picker, a switch starts on On and a setpoint with the device’s current value. An action that sends to the command topic of a known device shows as Switch or Setpoint with that device, MQTT command is left for topics without a device. The Advanced tiles appear once + Action is open. Switch sets a device to On, Off or Toggle. Setpoint sends a value to an output, and the value can come from a measurement. Notify raises a notification with a level, a title and a text. MQTT command publishes a payload to a topic. The head of a setpoint card takes the colour of its device’s role.
Reading a rule
The state between conditions and actions shows the rule’s current result, for example Waiting for hold time, Cooldown running or Energy balance stale. While a hold time or cooldown runs, the remaining time is shown below it, together with the last trigger and how often the rule has fired. How it works lists every result. When the service is offline, the state always reads Service offline, because none of the values can be trusted.
Each condition shows one of three states, in a badge next to its line:
| State | Meaning |
|---|---|
| open | The condition is not met. The text beside the badge says why, for example that the threshold is not reached or that there is no value yet. |
| waiting | The condition is met and waits for its hold time. |
| met | The condition is met and its hold time is over. |
The expanded rule card also shows a trigger strip with the last four triggers. Its time window fits those four triggers and is at least 30 minutes wide. The strip needs Record history to be on for the rule. Otherwise the card says that history is off for this rule. Above the blocks, each numeric condition has a live bar with the caption Now · field. The value is on the left, the threshold on the right, and a hatched part marks the hysteresis.
The live values come from the automation service, which evaluates every
tick_interval_s (default 10 s). They show what the rule last computed with,
not the newest value the dashboard has elsewhere. The header says how long ago
the service last reported. When it is offline, the page shows the last known
state.
With Show history on in the toolbar, each rule with a balance condition shows a 30 minute sparkline under its row. The line is the value of the balance field, and the dashed line is the threshold. Grid export is shown as positive feed-in. A rule without readings shows No readings. Show full history in the expanded card opens the list of the last triggers of one rule, each marked as Triggered, Blocked or Error. A trigger from a test carries a Test badge.
On a phone
Below 900 px wide the toolbar has two rows. The first row switches between Scenarios and Single rules. The second row has Assistant, Save and a history icon button in place of the Show history switch. The button is pressed while history is on.
A rule row shows its device path and a short status instead of the pill. The short status is met, not met, Cooldown, waiting, Error or off. The rule’s switch stays at the right. When history is on, the sparkline sits under the row.
The expanded card ends with a row of Edit, Test and a trash icon for Delete rule. The editor head stays at the top while you scroll. It shows the back tile, the name, the switch and one line with the status and the last trigger. The footer with Discard and Done stays at the bottom. The condition cards show their state badge, and the device and value fields take the full width of the card.
Testing an action
Test now on an action runs exactly that action at once, without checking conditions, hold time or cooldown. For a publish action the dashboard first shows the topic and payload that would be sent and asks for confirmation. The result appears as a message: published, blocked with the reason, or failed.
- The test always uses the saved rule. With unsaved changes, save first.
- A test works on a disabled rule too.
- A test does not start the cooldown and does not count as a trigger.
publish_allowed_prefixesapplies to tests just as to real triggers.- The button needs the
automationsrole and a reachable service.
Rules that refer to entities
When you pick an entity, the editor copies its topic (and for conditions its value template) into the rule. The service works with that copy and never looks at the device registry. If the entity changes later, for example because a device was discovered again with a new topic, the editor shows a note with the current topic. Conditions offer Apply to take it over. Nothing is updated automatically, so a rule never points at a different device without you noticing. If the entity is no longer in the registry at all, the rule keeps running with the saved topic.