Build One Script to Rule Them All in home Assistant

Let's be real.

When you start automating the boring stuff in your home, you find that a lot of the scenarios you want to automate are very similar. In Fact, I would guess that you have a lot of scripts, scenes, and automations that touch the are almost identical except you change the brightness of a light or the media player you use.

If you are not careful you will end up with a Home Assistant configuration that is 15k lines....like mine.

In this video, I will show you how you can tame that web of slightly different automations, scripts, and scenes, and replace them with a single dynamic script that can be reused in all situations.

So if you are looking for a more streamline approach to building your automations, looking for ways to reduce the size of your config, or simply wanting to find ways to make your home smarter, stick around because we are going to build dynamic scripts using Parameters.

Here are the video chapters:

00:00 - Build Dynamic Scripts in Home Assistant - Intro
01:14 - What do you mean, Parameters?
01:55 - Build One Home Assistant Script to Rule Them All
06:54 - Use Parameters to makeHome Assistant Smarter
10:30 - Wrapping it Up

Links to things in the video:

Who am I?

My Name is Jeff. I am an Automator of boring things and a huge Home Assistant fan. I also live in a house that tweets.

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Home Assistant Gear:

Video Gear used to make this content (affiliate links):

[SmartHomeJunkie]

Great, I wasn't aware of using parameters. I always used helpers for that. Learned something! Thanks.

[thecoolben]

Knowledge + simplicity + dry humor and snarky comments = new subscriber!
Great stuff, and I can't wait to dive into your other videos! Good luck with all the wayward digital assistants!

[DrakeStardragon]

2 Years late, but the phrase would be "passing variables as parameters". You are essentially correct.

[joelfrojmowicz]

Great video. Amazing channel. Keep up the good work!

[wbpcv]

Never heard of jinja, but would love to know more (not a programmer.) Thanks for your teaching heart!

[SterileStreaming]

I would love to see how you setup your text notifications.

[DaManOommen]

Thanks so much for all the videos you have put out. I have learned so much about home assistant from those. I am not an expert programmer but I'm very comfortable with it and I love coding, especially in yaml or js. But jinja templates is so new to me and I get tripped up on the syntax almost always and even using the excellent template test tool under developer tools. So I would love a video explaining in detail about jinja templates, please don't just be focused on basic stuff, I would love as much detail as you can provide. Thanks again.

[hartleyelectricalcontracto]

I really like the way you explain your content, it is really easy to follow along. I have a basic grasp of jinja2 templating but would be really interested in what other's have managed to do with it, there doesn't seem to be many comprehensive guides to using jinja in home assistant on YouTube.

[joshuastilwell]

Excellent video, but I missed the info on how exactly you coded the step by step increase in lighting.

[heimdallmidgard]

Awesome. Please gibe us more about Ginger.

[matejfoltyn]

Hey, I just wanted to say that even though your videos are very interesting, we see a big transition to GUI implementations and/or blueprints. It will be much easier for us to follow without the code :)
I get that this approach has its benefits but is more difficult for us noobs ;)

[andymok]

So much info, so little time. Great video. I really want some inexpensive little audio players. Something to play audio notifications. I refuse to buy any google/alexa smart (spying) devices. If I could setup without having to provide account info to register, sure. The just kill the mic. Bad enough with the smart phones. I also don't care to speak out commands. Just me.

[rasbe]

Another great video Jeff. I am very interested in a video on using Amazon Polly.

[MikeWills]

Love the video so far, but totally unrelated question that sprung up when you showed the Master Bedroom automation- how did you get the lux value from the Aqara motion sensor into HA? As far as I can tell it doesn't pull via the Homekit integration

[liveartrainbow]

Thank you for sharing. Did you think of adding LoRa to create automation for your garden for example?

[scottk]

Thanks for the good videos. Shouldn't you also use before sunrise with after sunset as a condition? Would it not just stay true?

[ayshasheppard]

Are these not variables or is it handled differently?

I wanna be a jinja ninja. not a programmer, but I like to learn stuff,

[jstr]

After about 3 minutes you tell something usefull. Btw totally useless for starters. Show something simple and SHORT. You start with a script of about 400 lines.