Timers - where are the entities?

[storm vale]

Ok Nabu, set a timer called BREAD TIMER for 1 hour.

where can I check & monitor/display the entities for this named timer?

[random raven]

I believe they're only on device right now. Or so Frenck said a week or so ago

[storm vale]

Interesting. I'm figuring that out now. these REALLY need to be exposed as Entities....

[storm vale]

yup, I just checked the yaml - everything specific to timers is internal to the ESP32 with no exposed entities. That sucks.

[past loom]

There's no good way to expose many optional entities.
I have a snippet for Koala to expose time to next active timer. It works, but something tells me it's not really right approach. 🙂

[storm vale]

I do this in Alexa.

    icon: mdi:timer-outline
    state: >
        {% if state_attr("sensor.kitchen_original_next_timer", "sorted_active") != None %}
          {% set sorted_active = state_attr("sensor.kitchen_original_next_timer", "sorted_active") | from_json %}
          {% if sorted_active[0] in sorted_active %}
            {{ (sorted_active[0][1].triggerTime|int /1000 -  (as_timestamp(now()))) | timestamp_custom('%H:%M:%S', false)}}
          {% else %}unavailable{% endif %}
        {% else %}unavailable{% endif %}   
    attributes:
      label: >
        {% if state_attr("sensor.kitchen_original_next_timer", "sorted_active") != None %}
          {% set sorted_active = state_attr("sensor.kitchen_original_next_timer", "sorted_active") | from_json %}
          {% if sorted_active[0] in sorted_active %}
            {{ sorted_active[0][1].timerLabel }}
          {% else %}Timer 1{% endif %}
        {% else %}Timer 1{% endif %}
  - name: "Alexa Timer 2"
 etc, etc

it gives me this in my OpenHasp display

I'm also a chef, so this is like a MUST HAVE feature in my kitchen 🙂

I sent an email to the guy who wrote the timers in ESPHome for the HA VPE. Let's see what he says.

[past loom]

You mean Jesse?

[storm vale]

Keith was listed in the repo, but yeah, according to Keith, Jesse Hills wrote it. I'll ping him when he gets back from his vacation.

I wish I was a more competent coder.... I can see all the timer stuff is all there, but it's completely internal to the ESP. Nothing is exposed to HA. Multiple timers are supported, so a new multi-attribute entity needs to be created and exposed to HA that iterates active timers listing their name & time left on the timer.

[past loom]

Updating attributes every second is not good for API. I believe I saw conversation about it right after introducing timers for ESP32-S3-BOX.

[storm vale]

My Alexa timers only update every minute or so. Even at 5-10 seconds it would be much more useful.

[hasty granite]

I think it would be enough to call the API on create/update/delete of a timer to synchronize between the esp32 and HA. If the timer has some kind of ID it would be possible to have multiple timers. Just my thoughts about it. I hope this will be coming in the future.

[past loom]

Well it's okay for you, but for working functionality having timers updated once in 10 seconds would be buggy thing, agree? 🙂

[past loom]

Update once would be much better, yes.
How unique id can help with this tho? HA doesn't work well with dynamic entities - only with attributes. And even with single update on change, something should tick the timers on HA side.

[random raven]

HA timer entities already only change on a state change of some sort

Anything that needs real time updates needs to do it itself

[hasty granite]

I'm relatively new to all this so my thoughts are only assumptions. HA could create a temporary timer helper which gets edited whenever it changes on the esp32. HA needs to do the ticking itself. And helpers could be bound to a device as far as I know. (Sorry I replied to the wrong message)

[past loom]

I mean, you sorta need to create timer entity dynamically in HA when user sets new timer, and delete after completion. That's not how HA works.. 🙂

[past loom]

I understand your thoughts. But how you possibly can display something, if you don't know if it exists and if it does - you don't know its ID...?

[hasty granite]

I understand. A workaround would be a function returning timer helpers bound to the entity but I think this is not the right way.

[past loom]

Yeah it goes against the logic of HA... So far anyways.
Having attribute on assist_satellite with array of active timer end times looks more appropriate.

[hasty granite]

That would be perfect but I don't know enough to implement this.

[past loom]

I don't think it's actually implementable right now.
There's possibility to add attributes to template sensor in ESPHome, but it's pretty rudimentary, or docs are not great. From this thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/Esphome/comments/1g54mom/how_to_add_attributes_to_esphome_sensors/?rdt=57448

[storm vale]

An array of 5 timers. Having any more would be up to the user to implement. Update all 5 of the HA timer entities every 5 seconds ( could be user configurable). This would be totaly acceptable. Each timer already goes off exactly on time on the Satellite. Its just the display in HA that might lag a few seconds.
Honestly this is totally acceptable.
REAL WORLD: By the time the timer goes off and you turn your head to look at the display, it will most likely already be updated.
If you need Precice timers with a realtime display, use a stopwatch.

Ok, here's the psudo-code! Now who can help me implement it?

[past loom]

Not acceptable, because timer is ticking once per second. If you're posing artificial restrictions to the functionality - it's done wrong. 🙂
Same goes to 5 timers. Why 5, not 10?
Anyways. Implementing something in huge project like ESPHome has particular limitations. This way isn't good way..

[storm vale]

ok. we can agree to disagree. But it's not in core ESPHome, it's in the config file.

[past loom]

You keep saying it's totally acceptable, but it's only personal opinion and single use case. 🙂
If someone will implement 5 timers and 10 sec interval, it will raise more discussions you can imagine. 🙂

[past loom]

Oh, you can do whatever you want in your config, for sure!
As I said, I already had first timer exposed.

BTW is there timer entity for ESPHome? I doubt so... So it's just sensor then.

[storm vale]

look at the yaml - it's all there.

[past loom]

Where?

[storm vale]

  - addressable_lambda:
          name: "Timer Tick"
          update_interval: 100ms
          lambda: |-
            auto light_color = id(led_ring).current_values;
            Color color(light_color.get_red() * 255, light_color.get_green() * 255,
                  light_color.get_blue() * 255);
            Color muted_color(255, 0, 0);
            auto timer_ratio = 12.0f * id(first_active_timer).seconds_left / max(id(first_active_timer).total_seconds , static_cast<uint32_t>(1));
            uint8_t last_led_on = static_cast<uint8_t>(ceil(timer_ratio)) - 1;
            for (int i = 0; i < 12; i++) {
              float brightness_dip = ( i == id(global_led_animation_index) % 12 && i != last_led_on ) ? 0.9f : 1.0f ;
              if (i <= timer_ratio) {
                it[i] = color * min(255.0f * brightness_dip * (timer_ratio - i) , 255.0f * brightness_dip) ;
              } else {
                it[i] = Color::BLACK;
              }

so clearly this id could be used in a lambda:
id(first_active_timer).seconds_left

[storm vale]

I started a discussion in ESPHome Discussions on Github. Somehow this needs to be solved.... I'm throwing ideas out at this point. Feel free to shoot them down and propose alternatives.
https://github.com/esphome/esphome/discussions/8017

[past loom]

This ID is internal global variable ID. Nothing to do with entity ID in Home Assistant. 🙂

[storm vale]

I know.

it can still be used in a labmda

[past loom]

Yes, that's how I exposed it to the sensor.

But it's just single sensor with time left on first timer.

[storm vale]

I know.

[past loom]

You can set it to -1 in Home Assistant, if no timers ongoing

So this sensor is always there.

[storm vale]

I'm pointing actual programmers (I'm a hack) to the place where all this happens in ESPHome.

[past loom]

Yeah i also have no PRs to ESPHome 🙂 Let's see what devs say.