How To Use HELPERS In Home Assistant - TUTORIAL

Did you know that HELPERS are very powerful in Home Assistant Automations and Scripts? Helpers are variables that can be used to store all kind of data in Home Assistant. You can store booleans, numbers, text, lists, datetime, date, time, timer and dropdown data in them to use them in your automations and scripts and create awesome intelligent events in Home Assistant. This tutorial shows you how you can set up helpers and use them to make your automations and script really intelligent and get from a Smart Home to an Intelligent Home!

⭐⭐⭐
I cannot do this without your support!
If my videos save you time, you can support me in the following ways:

⭐⭐⭐

The code used in this video can be found here: ...

See the list of Smart Home devices that I use and recommend here:

If you got enthusiastic about Home Assistant, you can watch these videos too:

Background music composed and produced by Smart Home Junkie

Contents:
0:00 Introduction
0:21 General description
1:03 Description of the various helper types
1:50 First helper example: turn off devices at helper time
4:34 Example of automation that uses the helper time
5:55 Set temperature to a value of a number helper in YAML
9:40 Show Lovelace dashboard to manage helper values
11:45 Example of more advanced helper functionality using a script and YAML

#homeassistant #smarthome #homeautomation #iot #smarthomejunkie

[priyavitallara]

This is the first channel I found that explains scripts. Appreciate it, good Sir!

[chjr]

Isn't it sad that the home assistant documentation is so bad that we need to wait for cool people like Smart Home Junkie to create a great video to explain those things? Thank you for creating this content!

[redradoa]

Great video. Thank you very much for your work.

[JoseBerruezo]

I never thought of using Helpers that way. Excellent video

[KaleoMgmt]

Just started looking at Helpers. Thank you!!!!

Using a SmartPlug to smarten up my Washer and Dryer by monitoring the energy output and changing a Text dropdown status (Idle, Running, Stopped).

[MartinKuzmicz]

Great video, easy to understand. Thanks a lot.

[plaiter]

Excellent video. Good description of helpers. It filled in some of the gaps so I was able to rewatch and understand other videos. Thanks so much.

[CB]

Another informative video. Love the way you tie your videos together👍

[michiel]

Super video, really good intruction. Now I can set the time of my coffee machine to startup in the morning Awesome. Thanks!

[MrJester]

Awesome videos! Thank you so much for everything you do!

[huizebruin]

Weer netjes uitgelegd.
Zitten nog wel weer wat handige tips tussen voor Huizebruin.

[thierry]

Great video, clear and concise explanation. Subbed..

[geirvalsvik]

Great video. I'm trying to figure out if it is possible to create a helper or similar to use a smart plug without power monitoring to calculate the energy usage. I use the smart plugs in automations, and HA knows how long the plug is on or off. Having a electrical heater with know power connected to such a plug will enable HA to calculate the energy usage when knowing the duty cycle and manually inputting the heaters power. I have tried to set up a helper to do this, but the smart plug do not show up as a input sensor in the "Add utility meter", so I am kind of stuck. Thanks for any advice if you have any input to this.

[jo-johomburg]

Erg goed uitgelegd. Kon gelijk horen dat ik met een Nederlander te maken heb! Maar je Engels is compleet ! Je legt het perfect uit. Welk systeem gebruik je voor je radiotors? Ik ben benieuwd hoe je dit regelt met de temperatuur. Ik ben ook verder erg blij dat ik helpers beter kan inzetten met nieuwe opties. De optie bestond al heel lang maar gebruikte het amper. Zo ben ik ook steeds meer automatiseringen in scripts gaan onderbrengen. Zie ook graag nog een video over scenes. Ik ben nu lid van je kanaal. Bedankt voor al je nieuwe inspiraties

[bgable]

The material you cover is great. Especially, showing the yaml code. However, the flow of demonstration jumps around a lot, kind of ad lib. Yes, I gleaned some insights, but, maybe a little more prep and outline would help your viewers understand more easily .

[RolandG-yw]

Never used helpers but this could make me move some node red stuff over.

[Dynamoer]

Great video. I have a question but I’m not sure it fits in Helpers or another part of HA.
My electric heating is (still) based on accumulation overnight and I have a switch to control start/stop of the loading and a sensor for the outdoor temperature. I want to calculate a duration time for the loading process based on the outdoor temperature and use this in an automation. Any idea how to realise this?

[Klaus-macht-Bilder_de]

Thank you very much for this (again) vey helpful explenations :)
2 point where I still struggle:
- I want to inegrate a number helper (slider +/- 60 Minutes ) to customize a shutter to open at sunset +/- silider position
- My shutter needs to get a shutter percentage that I can set in the automation - but I would like to input there a helper value

[SBinVancouver]

I had hoped to use your example to trigger an automation based on the current date/time versus date/time stored in a helper I created. The logic would be "Do X unless the date/time in Y is within Z seconds of the current time. The use-case is whether motion in front of a door was triggered by an arrival (camera motion sensing suggesting a package delivery) or us, opening the door and going to get the package. Not sure how to achieve this. Can you point me in the right direction? Thanks!

[josecorreia]

I've been following your videos since a awhile, and I'm using your tips in many ocasions. I'm very grateful for that. Tks. Addictionaly, I would like to question you if I can use helpers (toggle) to reset my smoke detectors. My smoke detetctors needs to cut off the power source after an alarm situation, even if they aren't in presence of the smoke. I'm using a relay which I manually control in lovelace, to restart the system. Do you think that I can avoid the relay using the helpers or absolutely I can't?