Tracking recently changed events?

General
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If you search through this forum, you will find hundreds of threads from people using Node-RED for home automation. It is a very popular choice for HA and HA is very well supported directly as well as being embedded into other HA products.

A search would also show up a great many examples of this kind of processing & multiple options have been given throughout this thread. You will often get a more specific response if you share some code that you've tried.

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No doubt many people are using Node Red for home automation. That's how I learned about Node Red in the first place, from Hubitat's forums. Though I believe Hubitat's node was only recently created. And I have most definitely searched the forums for help on a number of things I wanted to accomplish. The documents embedded with each node is also very helpful! I've probably converted 90% of my hubitat rules to node red flows and am very happy with how well they work. They were very basic event driven flows though. I.e. button controllers, lighting schedules, alexa announcements.

Everyone on this thread has been extremely helpful. And even by the first two replies I was able to get a working flow that made sense to me.

My searches for what I was particularly looking for did not yield too many examples. Maybe 2 out of 50? I attribute this to three things. a) Used the wrong search terms. b) Confused node red's "low-code programming" with "no code" programming. I skipped over anything involving custom functions though this is probably what I'm going to use, and lastly c) skipping over posts I thought were irrelevant to me (I'm talking about you openhab post! Rookie mistake!)

As an aside, the openhab post showed a visual representation of switches in series that @robmak was talking about that I just couldn't get. What I was doing was wiring up device -> switch -> device -> switch. -> command. The openhab example shows switches literally wired together, but the switch input/output were based on variables.

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Its difficult to explain in a way that is understandable and easy to pick up. What I like about node-red apart from how useful it is, is the forum is friendly and helpful without the usual judgemental chat room jargon that totally puts me off communicating.
I have a flow that automates my house alarm with contact sensors on the garden gates and geofence locating for me and my wife. It works great with alexa routines notifications and announcements. I think it does something similar to what you require but the flow looks so dam complicated its probably easier to start a new flow from scratch than deciphering my flow and then editing it to your needs.
I am interested in how you solve your problem and then how you improve on it, so please keep me posted. We all learning and every bit of info helps.

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Wow, that was a flash from the past!! Hard to believe that I wrote that guide over two years ago.... I've since replaced all my in series "and" switch flows with this Match node - https://flows.nodered.org/node/node-red-contrib-match

I also moved from using automation system specific nodes to using MQTT to make it easier to directly connect with multiple systems.

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Thank you for writing that post! It's helping me understand how node red does the things I did in hubitat's rule machine.

Oh no, I'm going to be drowning soon! I'll look into my mqtt options with Hubitat. I only have some peripheral knowledge about MQTT. I know my dafang hacks wyze cameras are controlled through MQTT.

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I have just added the match node to my palette and intend to insert it where currently there is switch nodes in series. This perfectly illustrates why its worthwhile chatting on this forum even when your flows are working. There is always room for improvement. Just a quick check through my flows and the match node is going to streamline most of them nicely. Thankyou

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