2022.4: Groups! Groups! Groups!

Core just uses Feature Requests

Well not the only one. If memory serves most controversial one at the time of this release was lack of support for person groups in the UI since legacy groups supported grouping person entities. Also notification groups are still only in YAML but issues with that one were specifically called out in the release notes.

And I mean universal media players aren’t ui-configurable right now either. Basically this release made it so if there is a type of entity with a binary state you can easily make groups of them. Entities that don’t have a binary state can’t be grouped by the group integration, they’ll have to be grouped some other way. That wasn’t part of this release but certainly could be done.

Did you find a solution for this?

As far as I remember I restarted HA and the issue was gone. I learned that restarting HA once or twice after an upgrade can magically fix issues.

Thanks. I notice restarting fixes this indeed though it sometimes takes like 8 or so restarts.
This means I can’t schedule any regular restart because the chance that Telegram doesn’t work after 1 restart is very big.

I see the Problem. But what if they all have the same types? Why not resticting to merge different HVAC types meanwhile?

The type doesn’t really matter, its a question of how to set the state. A group entity has a binary state, on or off. climate entities don’t, their state is equal to their heating mode. So its not binary and there’s really no clear way to make them binary.

I can’t remember if I said it here or elsewhere but what you should look at as an example here is universal media player:

There’s no media player group for the same reason there’s no climate group - media players don’t have a binary state. Instead we have the universal integration, which allows you to create a parent media player which has its state set from its children and commands all of them with a single service call.

I believe what you really need is for the universal integration to add support for climate entities. And also become ui-configurable. At least in my opinion, perhaps the code owner disagrees, idk.

EDIT: Actually, why not, it is WTH month after all:

But yes there is: Group - Home Assistant

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Oh. Weird, guess I’m wrong then. Whats the point of universal media player then?

Either way that’s clearly not binary state so I guess a climate group could work if groups have been expanded. Someone just needs to lay out logic for what state the group is in when the members are in different modes

The logic makes sense, could probably be extended to climates

For example, you have separate devices to combine: Maybe it’s a separate amp and TV. Maybe it’s an old dumb audio player with a Pi connected to it and the player connected to a smart plug.