Notification for Automations Running

I have some basic automations running so far and I’m finding that my wife continues to shut off the outside lights that I have running after sunset as she thinks they were left on by mistake. Oddly this is the only time she actually shuts lights off :slight_smile:
My thought here is to change the LED bar color on the dimmers to green while they are running an automation to avoid someone shutting them off.

Looking for some guidance in how I can accomplish this is Node Red with Home Assistant.

Thanks!

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I’m far from an expert but install the “node-red-contrib-ha-inovelli-manager” palette.

Put your trigger feeding either the Inovelli LED or Scene manager node. Setup the node with the HA entity ID and then pick the type of device and the effect you want. You can use the LED manager to simply change the color of the strip or the Scene manager to put a scene. With a scene you can add effects but you lose the indication of on-off or dim level.

On the output of that put a HA Call Service node. In that node just put under output properties msg.payload = sent data. Ignore the red box around the data line.

LOL, I feel ya!

Just suggestions, as I understand you just want a notification to tell someone that an automation is running. Of course, that still won’t prevent anyone from turning off the light. So . . .

You could run an automation that disables local control of the switch while the automation is running, preventing them from turning it off. You could add an override with a multipress scene on the switch to turn the light off, sort of like the secret handshake.

More deviously, you could run an automation that would allow someone to turn the light off, wait a minute so they think they accomplished something, and then turn it back on. :sunglasses:

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Or quicker than a minute like:

Useless Box

I use ST so I can’t confirm specifics about HA / Node Red but - if the notification bar is managed similarly, where each color/pattern is shown as a “device” you can turn on and off, you could just create that green notification and include it in the same automation that turns the bulb on/off. That’s how I would do it, but maybe that isn’t possible in your setup…

Thanks for the tip. Got it working but yes, the downside is that you can’t have it show the dim level of the light on the LED. Serves the purpose I was going for though so I’ll consider this a win for now!

I submitted a request to the maintainer to see if that could be added as an effect in the future.

Use the LED node instead of the Scene node and that will change the color and leave the level indication. If that is what you submitted then It exists already.

I’ve been using the notification manager node as that allows me to send a “clear notification” message to the switch when the automation time ends. Just tested this with swapping out the LED node and that does not work as I believe its not considered to be in a notification state when adjusting the color using the LED node.

Obviously I could just use the LED node at the end of the automation to set it back to the default color and brightness to accomplish this. I do like the clear notification function though.

Appreciate the comments and suggestions from all!