Spoof window sensor for presence - To close off a room/rad only used by one person

[richsimpson]

Making use of the window open sensor, I have altered for my use case.

For me, my office is a cold room in the house, being above a garage and so I only want to heat that room if I am likely to go into it.

My routine is fairly rigid although the frequency is not any routine - could be a Monday and Tuesday might be a Thursday only or not at all, however, if I am in the work office and so out of the house, then I will be up and away by 6am. So a check around that time to spoof a window open state is ideal. I tried various ways and on restarts with some methods I would get the Better Thermostat valve showing unavailable.

The method that works is an input boolean in Hass set to default to either on (I am away/window open) or off (home/closed). The usual person/presence sensor is used for this.

Then in Node Red (my preferred way of automations but doable in Hass automations too) I have a scheduled check at 6am to turn the boolean on/off as appropriate plus an event change note that will do the same as I come and go.

Would be theoretically possible to have the valve turn on as I am approaching home or leaving my work office, but for me, I wouldn't use the room anyway one was home so happy it just goes back to the standard routine rather than heating to be more comfortable.

As you see, today I am home, the boolean was set as off (aka Rich is Home, aka window closed).

Using other methods was creating issues, usually on a hass restart or system reboot as the sensor may be unknown and so the Better Thermostat integration left it as a "unavailable" device. Reloading brought it back to life but had to be manual.