Check if the automation has run in the past 4 hours

[modern bronze]

Hola, I want to check if the automation has run in the past 4 hours and if so, dont actually run it.
With this Im checking battery voltage and if its lower than a given treshold, do XYZ.
My problem is: How can I check if the automation has run in the last 4 hours?
There doesn't seem to be a thing, maybe I need some helper entity?

[uncut plaza]

you could at the end of the automation have it turn itself off with automation.turn_off then have a 2nd automation that triggers when the main automation's entity has been off for 4 hours and switch it back on with automation.turn_on

or if the automation itself is set to "single" mode (default)
which means another instance cant be triggered whilst 1 is running. then you could just add a 4 hour delay at the end of it. so it doesn't actually finish for 4 hours

the disable/enable solution would be better as its easier to manually overide if/when needed

[modern bronze]

that sounds good, I will look into that later.
Hope I can get it to work then
thanks for the advice! 👍🏽

[uncut plaza]

no worries, good luck with it

[modern bronze]

it makes sense in the end, I have another automation that checks for battery high treshold with that I could turn the first one on again

[uncut plaza]

yeah, automations turning themselves and other automations on/off can be a powerful trick

[ionic junco]

Untested but I thought something like this was going to work?

  - condition: template
    value_template: >
      {{ state_attr('automation.some_automation', 'last_triggered') == none or
         (now() - state_attr('automation.some_automation', 'last_triggered')).total_seconds() > 4 * 3600 }}```

[modern bronze]

will check it later, thanks!

Implemented, are you interested in updates? Ie. if it worked?

[ionic junco]

Definitely

[uncut plaza]

i don't mind either way. but I hope it works as intended whichever method you go for 🙂

[modern bronze]

we'll see ... in 4 hours or so when the battery is charged and passes the treshold

so far my hacky solution for the shellly uni plus (see other thread under energy) seems to work

[remote lichen]

this is a more generic approach which works for every automation, regardless of enitity_id

condition:
  - condition: template
    value_template: >
      {{ now() - this.attributes.last_triggered | default(as_datetime(0), true) > timedelta(hours=4) }}

[ionic junco]

definitely "stealing" this, thank you