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Have you considered just putting the lights in the same group? If you can make your switches control the group you should be all set.
https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/group/
You might also be able to link them together on the Z-Wave/Zigbee level, depending on your hardware.
That just might work! It's definitely an easy way to control both at the same time. I just need to figure out a way to change the group's dimness when the dimness on one light's physical switch (a Kasa, unlike the Zigbee one next to it). Maybe an automation for that, targeting the group instead of a single device
Out of curiosity, is it something as simple as needing to wrap the template in quotes? I may be mixing up my YAML with the Ansible work I've been doing, but I think you need to have templates double quoted like this in order to resolve the jinja2 properly: "{{ state_attr('light.etc', 'brightness') }}
I don't think you need the quotes in the Templates section of dev tools but you do in YAML files. I could be wrong though, let me know if you try it.
Definitely use the state_attr() form over states.etc.etc form. I think there's something about how HA handles startup that may mess with templates if you use states.etc.etc
.
Combining this with similar comments, plus adding in the math to convert to a percent, I tried this:
brightness_pct: "{{state_attr('light.kitchen_sink_ceiling', 'brightness') | float(0) /255*100}}"
Still getting the same message
Message malformed: expected float for dictionary value @ data['brightness_pct']
For what it's worth, if I try to set brightness instead of brightness_pct, I get a different message
Message malformed: extra keys not allowed @ data['brightness']
(I'm assuming that device just doesn't accept a brightness attribute - not a big deal to math it out though)
Taking a different approach of starting simple and working up,
100.0 works
{{100.0}} does not work
"{{100.0}}" also does not work
Oh.. I think you also need double quotes around template brackets when used as the value in a service call..? Which conflicts with the quotes around the entity and attribute so just use single quotes there.
brightness_pct: "{{state_attr('light.kitchen_sink_ceiling', 'brightness')}}"
Just whipped up a partial example with my living room lights.
It is missing a trigger and an else butI focused on theactionyou had trouble with.
Using brightness instead of brightness_pct seemed simpler. (Or at least if both can usethe same attribute...)
alias: Example
description: ""
trigger: []
condition:
- condition: state
entity_id: light.living_room_floor_lamp_1
state: "on"
action:
- action: light.turn_on
metadata: {}
data_template:
brightness: "{{state_attr('light.living_room_floor_lamp_1', 'brightness')}}"
target:
entity_id: light.living_room_floor_lamp_2
mode: single
Hmmm if it's just complaining about expecting a float, you could maybe get away with simply multiplying by 1.0
{{state_attr("light.kitchen_sink_ceiling", "brightness") * 1.0}}
I think... {{state_attr("light.kitchen_sink_ceiling", "brightness") | float}} also works these days.
My lights return brightness=None when they're off... and None * 1.0 probably breaks something, so this might be more consistent: {{(state_attr("light.kitchen_sink_ceiling", "brightness") or 0) | float}}
PS: I can't say much about brightness_pct, I normally use brightness instead (0-255).
You’ll need to use | float(0) in templates. All state values and attributes start out as strings. Also setting a default value in the float(#) cast will ensure templates don’t break when the value is invalid.
That means use this style:
{{ state\_attr("light.kitchen\_sink\_ceiling", "brightness") | float(0) }}
If OP somehow needs to translate between beignes and brightness_pct.
Probably something like this:
brightness: "{{state_attr('light.kitchen_sink_ceiling', 'brightness') | float(0) /255*100}}"
I think OP might just have needed the quotes around the template brackets in the yaml.