Hardware Buttons - Trigger Scene

[beerygaz]

It's great to have light, switch and button entities for the "soft" buttons on the pages. But would it be possible to have the hardware buttons behave the same way? Right now I'm using "detatched" modes to control a light, but would prefer to be able to control a button so that I can trigger a scene. The hardware buttons are a lot easier to find and press in the dark.

I know I can use a custom mqtt topic, but that means some complex MQTT YAML in HA to get the trigger to fire always (as the payload does not from the panel remains static).

[tpanajott]

Yeah, I've though about adding support for "Detached button" as in it will create a button entity in HA and we can trigger "push" events on that button.

[beerygaz]

Have a coffee to to say thanks for adding this to the backlog. Thank you!

[surfmk]

Hi, I've just joined this fantastic project. Yes, please! need a way to assign scenes to the hardware buttons. I see the touchscreen more as a tool to customize lights rather than a daily switch. I might experiment by getting the detached button to switch on a spare Zigbee smart plug (entity in NSPM). This could be picked up in HA as a change in state and toggle a light scene.
@tpanajott, your solution sounds perfect and really hope you can get this working.

[tpanajott]

@surfmk for what it's worth you should be able to create a helper toggle instead of having a physical switch to use as a toggle.

[surfmk]

@tpanajott - ah... so I am missing something here then. I use HA helper toggles regularly in HA but I wasn't aware they were exposed in the NSPM interface? So, do you mean I can create an entity in NSPM that is actually a HA helper toggle and then assign that to the hardware switch?

[tpanajott]

@tpanajott - ah... so I am missing something here then. I use HA helper toggles regularly in HA but I wasn't aware they were exposed in the NSPM interface? So, do you mean I can create an entity in NSPM that is actually a HA helper toggle and then assign that to the hardware switch?

Hmm, that should work but perhaps I'm missremembering.

[surfmk]

@tpanajott. OK, I tested this and you can create a HA toggle and assign this as a "Switch" in the room entities page. I can see the HA helper toggle responding in real time with the screen tap. However, I am only able to assign light entities to the hardware switch in detach mode... as you can see from the attachment.

[tpanajott]

Ah, that seems like a miss. Would you kindly create a separate issues on this so I don't forget?

[surfmk]

Yes, will do. In the meantime, I should be able to define a HA template light in my configuration.yaml file... which acts like a boolean HA helper. This should expose itself as a light entity in the NSPM interface which I can then trigger scenes from. I'll post some code up here later if I can get it all to work.

[surfmk]

OK, so I managed to do it...

Pop this in your configuration.yaml file (or included templates.yaml file) and you now have a dummy light that can be connected to hard switch in detach mode. Then, use an automation to trigger a scene based on the light's status which is basic HA stuff.
Now when I press the button, all my normal room lights come on and all is well with the world!