Troubleshooting Guide

This guide helps resolve issues with the Smart Cover Automation integration.

Monitoring the Integration from the UI

Activity Logbook

All cover movements are logged in Home Assistant’s activity logbook. Fully translated, of course.

Filter the logbook for entries from this integration’s instances by selecting Smart Cover Automation as device (or whatever name you chose for your instances).

Sensors

The integration comes with the following sensors that help you understand the integration’s inner workings:

Evening closure: enabled? When enabled, covers will be closed a certain time after sunset.
Evening closure: delay Time to wait after sunset before closing the covers.
Lock status: Whether lock mode is enabled or disabled.
Nighttime: block opening? Whether to block automatic cover opening during nighttime (when the sun is below the horizon).
Status: Overall status returned by the last automation update.
Sun azimuth: Current sun azimuth (angle from north).
Sun elevation: Current sun elevation (angle above the horizon).
Temperature: today’s maximum: Maximum (expected) temperature of the current day. Derived from the configured weather forecast sensor.
Temperature: heat threshold: The configured temperature at which the automation starts closing covers to protect from heat.
Time range: disabled: Start and end of a configured time interval during which the automation is disabled. Off it this is not configured.
Weather: hot? Is today’s forecast maximum temperature expected to rise above the configured threshold temperature?
- After 16:00, tomorrow’s forecast maximum temperature is used instead of today’s.
Weather: sunny? Is the day expected to be at least partly sunny? Derived from the configured weather forecast sensor.

Debugging

Enable Verbose Logging

Make sure to enable verbose (debug) logging when analyzing a problem. This can be done via the UI (see the Configuration Guide).

Note that verbose logging is enabled per integration instance. This facilitates troubleshooting in a multi-instance setup as you’ll only see verbose messages from the instance(s) you’re interested in.

Log File Location

You can find the Home Assistant Core log at Settings → Systems → Logs.

Log Message Format

Timestamp: e.g., 2026-01-31 17:20:22.174
Severity: e.g., DEBUG
HA thread name: e.g., (MainThread)
Integration instance: e.g., [custom_components.smart_cover_automation.ABC12]
Cover entity: e.g., [cover.kitchen] (logged only when the message pertains to a cover)
Log message: the actual log message, e.g., Current weather condition: partlycloudy

As you can see above, the integration instance field contains the last five characters of the instance’s entry ID that logged the message (ABC12 in the example). This makes it easy to distinguish between messages from multiple instances.