Shabbat / Yom Tov Home Assistant Automations — Part 2 (Helper Configuration)

Jewish homeowners who want to configure automations in Home Assistant to facilitate religious observance will want to do so in two instances:

• It’s Shabbat (a weekly event!)

• It’s a Yom Tov (an event that occurs at intervals in the calendar)

The Jewish Sabbath Holidays Home Assistant add-on provides two sensors that are very helpful for configuring automations (these in turn are derived from the HebCal API:

sensor.hebcal_is_shabbat

This is a simple binary sensor (True/False) for determining whether or not it’s Shabbat (based upon your preconfigured candle-lighting time etc).

And:

sensor.hebcal_is_yomtov

This sensor states “No Info” unless it’s a Yom Tov (and changes to the Yom Tov name when one is in effect).

To simplify our automations, let’s try to condense both of these sensors into one state that we can (in turn) use to drive our lighting automations (etc).

I think that this is pretty straightforward, but it sometimes gets confusing thinking about devices, entities, helpers, automations, and so on.

Here’s what we’re doing:

Step 1: Create A Toggle (Type Of Helper)

Firstly, we’re going to create a toggle called Shabbat Or Hag State (name as you wish)

We could roll all of this into one automation but to make any potential troubleshooting easier I decided to create two separate automations.

Step 2: Build The Automations That Will Drive The Toggle

The Shabbat one is a bit easier.

When the Shabbat sensor moves to “True” we want to shift the toggle from off to on:

This is what I came up with:

alias: Shabbat activates Shabbat/Hag mode
description: "When the Shabbat sensor switches to 'True' we're going to turn the Shabbat or Hag toggle on"
trigger:
  - platform: state
    entity_id:
      - sensor.hebcal_is_shabbat
    to: "True"
condition: []
action:
  - service: input_boolean.turn_on
    metadata: {}
    data: {}
    target:
      entity_id: input_boolean.shabbat_mode
mode: single

For the Yom Tov sensor:

The sensor reports ‘No Info’ unless it’s a hag/Yom Tov in which case it will report the name of the hag.

The logic we need here is that we want to trigger the toggle if the sensor changes to any value other than ‘No Info’.

I used this value template (thanks to those who shared it on the Home Assistant forums).

alias: Hag triggers state
description: ""
trigger:
  - platform: state
    entity_id:
      - sensor.hebcal_is_yomtov
condition:
  - condition: template
    value_template: "{{ not is_state('sensor.hebcal_is_yomtov', 'No Info') }}"
action:
  - service: input_boolean.turn_on
    metadata: {}
    data: {}
    target:
      entity_id: input_boolean.shabbat_mode
mode: single

Step 3: Automate Based On The Toggle State

You could trigger an entire cascade of automations that trigger at various times IF it’s either Shabbat or Yom Tov:

IF it’s Shabbat or Yom Tov and 23:00, automatically get the apartment into bedtime config.
IF it’s Shabbat or Yom Tov and 09:00, automatically get the apartment into morning config.
Etc.

For instance, here’s an automation that triggers a lighting scene for the start of Shabbat/Yom Tov when the helper toggle becomes true:

alias: Start of Shabbat / Yom Tov automation
description: >-
  Activates the start of Shabbat / Yom Tov scene when the Shabbat or Yom Tov
  helper becomes true.
trigger:
  - platform: state
    entity_id:
      - input_boolean.shabbat_mode
    to: "True"
condition: []
action:
  - service: scene.turn_on
    metadata: {}
    target:
      entity_id: scene.start_of_shabbat
mode: single

Step 4: Configure The ‘Toggle Off’ Automations

Finally we’re going to need to configure automations that reverse the toggle state (to off) when Shabbat or Hag ends.

To save a bit of time we can use the ‘Duplicate’ button in ‘Automations’.

Here’s the Shabbat one.

alias: Shabbat over, Shabbat/Hag toggle off
description: "When the Shabbat sensor reports 'false' we'll move the helper trigger to off too."
trigger:
  - platform: state
    entity_id:
      - sensor.hebcal_is_shabbat
    to: "False"
condition: []
action:
  - service: input_boolean.turn_off
    target:
      entity_id:
        - input_boolean.shabbat_mode
    data: {}
mode: single

Then do the same for the hagim/Yom Tov switch. If the sensor goes back to reporting ‘No Info’ we’ll move the toggle back over to false:

alias: Hag is over, toggle goes to false
description: >-
  When the is_yomtov sensor reports 'No Info' (it's not Yom Tov) we'll move the
  toggle back to false.
trigger:
  - platform: state
    entity_id:
      - sensor.hebcal_is_yomtov
    to: No Info
condition: []
action:
  - service: input_boolean.turn_off
    target:
      entity_id:
        - input_boolean.shabbat_mode
    data: {}
mode: single

Optional But Nice To Have: A Monitoring Dashboard:

My Shabbat monitoring dashboard continues to evolve.

It pulls in entities both from Home Assistant’s (built in) Jewish Calendar integration and from the aforementioned third-party one.

It serves two purposes: before Shabbat get Shabbat times. And monitoring and troubleshooting, if required (the right column / ‘Automation States’).