Add "at_least" and "at_most" actions to the Timer integration

[kevinbackhouse]

Breaking change

Proposed change

Add two new actions to the Timer integration: "at_least" and "at_most". These features were suggested here (not by me, but I also think they would be very useful).

Type of change

• Dependency upgrade
• Bugfix (non-breaking change which fixes an issue)
• New integration (thank you!)
• New feature (which adds functionality to an existing integration)
• Deprecation (breaking change to happen in the future)
• Breaking change (fix/feature causing existing functionality to break)
• Code quality improvements to existing code or addition of tests

Additional information

• This PR fixes or closes issue: fixes #
• This PR is related to issue:
• Link to documentation pull request: Add documentation for timer.at_least and timer.at_most. home-assistant.io#37624
• Link to developer documentation pull request:
• Link to frontend pull request:

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[kevinbackhouse]

Thanks @StaleLoafOfBread. I've added a commit that renames the methods as you suggested.

[NoRi2909]

Following the conventions for actions in Home Assistants they should begin with a verb like all existing timer actions do.

So you should name them as

• Set minimum
• Set maximum

The "Duration" fields of both actions should then also become

• Minimum
• Maximum

as calling them "duration" is quite misleading: The actual timer duration may not change at all with these actions if it's either above or below the value given by the respective action.

This results in these action descriptions:

• Increases the remaining timer duration if it's less than the given minimum.
• Decreases the remaining timer duration if it's more than the given maximum.

[kevinbackhouse]

@NoRi2909: thanks for the feedback. I'm happy to change the name so that it starts with a verb, but I worry that "set minimum" would be misleading because there isn't a field named "minimum" that's getting set. What do you think of these suggestions instead:

• increase duration
• change duration to at least
• change with minimum
• postpone/delay, expedite/accelerate

[NoRi2909]

Perhaps we find the best name for the actions themselves if you go through my suggestions from the bottom up.

Then the fields "Minimum" and "Maximum" are given in the action (instead of the current "duration" in both) and their respective purpose is explained in the action descriptions.

[frenck]

Hi there @kevinbackhouse 👋

Thanks for opening a pull request. I don't know if this is something I would introduce to this component. To be sure this is not just limited to my opinion, I've scheduled this pull request for discussion in the next Core architectural meeting.

I will get back to you on the results of this in the upcoming week.

I'm marking this PR as a draft in the meantime.

../Frenck

[kevinbackhouse]

@frenck: Thanks for taking a look! To give you an example of why I think this feature would be useful, my house has a short corridor with a door on each end:

 -------------
\             \
 ------------- 

If the door on the left opens, I want to switch on a light in the corridor for the next 5 minutes. And if the door on the right opens, I want to switch on the light for the next 2 minutes. Timers are a very useful intermediary for this kind of thing because they let me check how much time is left on the clock. But the logic for doing so in YAML is quite cumbersome:

  - if:
      - condition: template
        value_template: >-
          {{ as_datetime(state_attr('timer.mytimer','finishes_at')) < now() +
          timedelta(120) }}
    then:
      - action: timer.start
        metadata: {}
        data:
          duration: "120"
        target:
          entity_id: timer.mytimer

And that snippet doesn't even include the logic for handling idle or paused timers. But besides the yaml solution being clunky, this feels to me like an operation that should be atomic. I'm not sure if home assistant is multi-threaded and able to run two automations in parallel, but in that scenario the yaml above would have a race condition.