2024.10.4
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Times of the Day

The Times of the Day integration provides a binary sensor that gets its values by checking if the current time is within defined time ranges.

Configuration

To add the Times of the Day helper to your Home Assistant instance, use this My button:

Manual configuration steps

If the above My button doesn’t work, you can also perform the following steps manually:

  • Browse to your Home Assistant instance.

  • Go to Settings > Devices & Services.

  • At the top of the screen, select the tab: Helpers.

  • In the bottom right corner, select the Create helper button.

  • From the list, select Times of the Day.

  • Follow the instructions on screen to complete the setup.

Name

The name the binary sensor should have. This can be changed later.

On time

The time when the sensor should turn on.

Off time

The time when the sensor should turn off.

YAML configuration

Alternatlively, this integration can be configured and set up manually via YAML instead. This has some additional functionality over the UI version.

The time ranges can be provided as absolute local time or using the sunrise or sunset keyword calculated based on the sun position for location. The location must be provided in the configuration.

In addition for sun position based ranges, the negative or positive offset can be configured.

To enable the Times of Day binary sensor in your installation, add the following to your configuration.yamlThe configuration.yaml file is the main configuration file for Home Assistant. It lists the integrations to be loaded and their specific configurations. In some cases, the configuration needs to be edited manually directly in the configuration.yaml file. Most integrations can be configured in the UI. [Learn more] file:

# Example configuration.yaml entry
binary_sensor:
  - platform: tod
    name: Early Morning
    after: sunrise
    after_offset: "-02:00"
    before: "07:00"
    unique_id: early_morning_sensor

  - platform: tod
    name: Late Morning
    after: "10:00"
    before: "12:00"
    unique_id: late_morning_sensor

Configuration Variables

Looking for your configuration file?
name string Required

Name of the sensor.

before string | time Required

The absolute local time value or sun event for ending of the time range.

before_offset time (Optional)

The time offset of the ending time range.

after string | time Required

The absolute local time value or sun event for beginning of the time range.

after_offset time (Optional)

The time offset of the beginning time range.

unique_id string (Optional)

An ID that uniquely identifies this sensor. This allows changing the name, icon, and entity_id from the web interface.

Considerations

The primary purpose of this sensor is to use a simple time range definition instead of creating a complex template with references to sun.sun integration attributes.

The sensor state is ON when this condition after + after_offset <= current time < before + before_offset.

If after time is later than before then the next day is considered, i.e.:

binary_sensor:
  - platform: tod
    name: Night
    after: sunset
    before: sunrise

In the above example, the next day sunrise is calculated as a time range end.

Daylight Saving Time Handling

The ToD sensor handles the following cases where the sensor interval:

  • does not exist at all
  • stops at a non-existent time
  • starts at a non-existent time.

To help understand all 3 cases, actual examples are provided below.

Case 1: Sensor Interval Does Not Exist

Let’s make the following assumptions:

  • Daylight Saving starts at 2am
  • On the DST day, the ToD sensor interval is from non-existent 2:30am to non-existent 2:40am.

In this case, the ToD sensor will not trigger since the 2:30am-2:40am interval does not exist on the day when time jumps from 2am to 3am. However, on the following day, the sensor resumed operating normally.

Case 2: Sensor End Time Does Not Exist

  • Daylight Saving starts at 2am
  • On the DST day, the ToD sensor interval is from 1:50am to non-existent 2:10am.

In this case, the ToD sensor will last 10 minutes starting at 1:50am and stop at 3am (the 2am-3am time is jumped over and does not exist).

Case 3: Sensor Start Time Does Not Exist

  • Daylight Saving starts at 2am
  • On the DST day, the ToD sensor interval is from non-existent 2:50am to 3:10am.

In this case, the ToD sensor will last 10 minutes, starting at 3:00am and stopping at 3:10am (the 2am-3am time is jumped over and does not exist).