(Trivial) Automation not firing (new app) - suggestions?

[georgeh (George)]

I have a “trivial” automation that won’t fire - shown below. I want notification when I leave IF I’ve left a door open. The door is using a “new” sensor, and that sensor state alone seems to report OK. The home/away mode change also seems to happen OK (checked w/separate notification, text notification received fine).
I’m not sure exactly what the poorly described advanced option of “precondition” in the location mode sub-setting does (seems to force the mode change to first happen?), but I’ve tried with both precondition on and off with the same non-results.

Any suggestions? I must be missing something obvious. (I could put in a webcore piston but rather stick to native ST features given the uncertain future.)

[nathancu (Nathan Curtis)]

Ok webcore user. The EASIEST way to think of precondition is the difference between a Webcore Condition and Trigger.

Precondition == Condition (Basically)
other items in an automation == Trigger.

I put this in a thread on a FB group earlier today:

So if you had an automation with three doors and you wanted the action to happen if door three opens but only of doors one and two are closed, you’d put all three in the automation, with door three set open but doors one and two closed as preconditions. (edit for clarity) Then effectively, your automation ‘fires’ anytime door three opens and while one and two are closed (I think it actually prevents the trigger from firing if all preconditions aren’t true - but same effect) while opening / closing doors one or two doesn’t do anything at all. If they weren’t preconditions, doors 1 and 2 would also trigger the automation if they closed while door three is open.

That means if we were writing this in WebCore, we’d do a Trigger on LocationMode Change to XXX and a restriction with Front Balcony Door == Open. To reproduce that in automation, make the contact sensor a precondition. TH location mode changing will trigger the automation but ONLY if Front Balcony Door is Open.

Does that help?

[Brad_ST (Brad)]

This automation should work and should fire under two scenarios:

1. The sensor is already open and the mode changes to Away (I assume this is what you are trying to capture).
2. The mode is already Away and the sensor opens.

Neither of these is working? Have you deleted and re-added the automation?

[georgeh (George)]

I’ve tested the first scenario many times without success. Have not tried the 2nd scenario.

I will try the second one, and delete/reinstall and report back.

[georgeh (George)]

Odd. I just tested both scenarios 1&2 above, this time by using a “scene” to force a mode change. In both cases I did get the notification. So something else is involved.

In all my earlier “tests”, I have an automation that triggers the “goodbye” scene when I leave, and in the goodbye scene it changes the mode to “away”. I never got this “door left open” automation’s notification. I verified (using another temporary automation) that the mode was being changed to “away” - so I assumed that portion was OK and the problem lies in the new “door left open” notification. My presence check (for departure/arrival events) uses IOS mobile presense, which is quite flaky - so perhaps the problem is related to that. But since I get “mode change due to having gone away” notifications OK it seems the mobile presence would not be the culprit. Sorry if the description is confusing.

Hmm… what to try next?

[Brad_ST (Brad)]

Very strange. If you note the next time the sensor is open, the mode is away, and you don’t get a notification I can take a look.

[georgeh (George)]

Finally back to this after recovering from the (June) app update. The automation now seems to be working OK and I am getting the texts, but I am not sure why or what changed. I suspect some issue with my (IOS) presence detection…

I think I got the app update shortly AFTER reporting this problem, and that update seemed to delete/disable/break my mobile presence device. I had to re-enable location tracking to get it to reappear, and after a couple of app delete/reinstall cycles the presence detect was back to its normal (best effort) operation. Since this was so close to the time of my problem with this automation, I suspect the issues were related.