Feature Request: Add support for "on change" sensors, where off => on and on => off both activate the entity controller

[ndbroadbent]

Description

I would like to activate my entity controllers with either a "door close" or a "door open" event. I also want them to go to the active_timer state whenever a light turns on (either manually or by an automation, etc.)

However, I also want all my controllers to use sensor: "duration". I don't want lights to turn off if a motion sensor has been detecting motion the whole time.

As a workaround, I've created some "changed" input booleans that turn on for 1 second whenever a door opens or closes, or when a light turns on. But I would really like to avoid creating these custom "changed" sensors.

Configuration

Here is one example. I use a similar pattern for most of my other lights:

entity_controller:
    entrance_stairway_lights:
      entity: light.entrance_lights_l1
      sensor_type: duration
      sensor_resets_timer: True
      delay: 600 # 10 min
      disable_block: True
      sensors:
        - input_boolean.light_turned_on_entrance_lights_l1
        - input_boolean.door_changed_front_door_sensor_contact
        - input_boolean.door_changed_garage_entrance_sensor_contact
        - binary_sensor.lower_stairway_motion_sensor_occupancy
        - binary_sensor.hallway_entrance_motion_sensor_occupancy
        - binary_sensor.alarm_system_motion_sensor_2_occupancy
      overrides:
        - input_boolean.disable_motion_sensor_controllers
        - input_boolean.disable_1st_floor_motion_sensor_controllers
        - input_boolean.disable_non_pet_friendly_motion_sensor_controllers
        - input_boolean.night_mode
      behaviours:
        on_enter_overridden: "off"
      service_data:
        brightness_pct: 100

The first 3 sensors turn on for 1 second when the light turns on, or when a door opens or closes. This means that I can use sensor_type: duration, which avoids the edge case where a motion sensor stays on continuously for 10 minutes. I use some battery-powered Zigbee motion sensors that stay on for 3-5 minutes before motion is no longer detected, so it's very easy to trigger them a few times in 10 minutes and get them to stay on the whole time.

Suggestion

I would like to suggest supporting a list of objects for sensors, where a sensor_type option can be provided for each sensor and override the default value. I would also like to see a few more sensor types:

• duration
• event
• event_off - triggers when state changes to "off"
• event_all - triggers on any state change ("on" or "off")

(Not sure about the naming.)

Something like this:

entity_controller:
    entrance_stairway_lights:
      entity: light.entrance_lights_l1
      sensor_resets_timer: True
      sensor_type: duration
      delay: 600 # 10 min
      disable_block: True
      sensors:
        - entity_id: input_boolean.light_turned_on_entrance_lights_l1
          sensor_type: event
          sensor_resets_timer: False
        - entity_id: binary_sensor.front_door_sensor_contact
          sensor_type: event_all
        - entity_id: binary_sensor.garage_entrance_sensor_contact
          sensor_type: event_all
        - binary_sensor.lower_stairway_motion_sensor_occupancy
        - binary_sensor.hallway_entrance_motion_sensor_occupancy
        - binary_sensor.alarm_system_motion_sensor_2_occupancy

Basically I would like to have a bit more flexibility over sensor events, and configure different sensor_resets_timer and sensor_type values for each sensor.

Another thing that would be really helpful is an inverted override, because I've found it quite annoying to create a lot of inverted binary_sensors. (I often use these to toggle between two different entity controllers.) Maybe by supporting a dict with an invert option like this:

overrides:
  - entity_id: input_boolean.enable_motion_sensor_controllers
    invert: true

Please let me know what you think!

Version

9.5.2