yes
yes
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light-groups are really cool 
im a relative newbie to HA but, based on our experience so far am basing our (future) product-range on it ! smashing software - do you think 'misāusing groups in this way is useful? do we NEED an alternative ? what benefits could it have ? (mainly for products BASED on HA but also for DIY use to make replacing components straight-forward > thanks
Itās not really miss-use, but itās also definitely not needed. You can rename any devices entity_id without changing the device itself. If you have to replace the device, remove the old device, add the new device, rename the new device to the old device. Done. You donāt have to update any yaml files or automations unless you used a device trigger or device action.
Thereās no reason for this extra layer of abstraction, it serves no purpose.
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what about where we have 100 appliances to ship ā¦ where the four lights.xyz are different for each product ā¦ we have each entities-ID is a spread-sheet ā¦ and can import that into a āgroups.yamlā file to automate the matching of ālight.L1ā to its actual entity (then discover the devices ā¦ automatically allocated to the correct L1/L2/L3/L4) - advice appreciated
Just rename themā¦ If you want to do it automatically, adjust the .storage files when HA is off. If the lights come from yaml, just rename them in the yaml.
so we can import a ādevices.yamlā which MAPS L1/L2/L3/L4 to each different product entity.xyz ? we cant - ideally - be doing that by hand ā¦ if weāre setting up a āhomeā thats cool ā¦ if weāre setting up 100 or 1000 āhomesā itāll add to our āproductionā time/effort/cost ??
would you mind explaining that in a bit more detail / example ? thanks
Find the integration that youāre using to create the lights, search the core.entity_registry in the storage folder for your lights, and change the entity_id in the file. Youāre not giving me enough info about your lights to further help. Youāre focused on the āmapā instead of the built in ways to update entity_ids. Thereās no way to map an entity_id to an alias via yaml, drop that line of thought.
so if - e.g. we use the config.yaml:
# Example configuration.yaml entry
light:
- platform: group
name: "L1"
entities:
- entity ālight.gu10_light_xyz"
name: "L2"
entities:
- entity ālight.gu10_light_abc"
sort of thing ??i cant actually find a āgroups.yamlā file !! but i should be able to !
Iām sorry, but youāre all over the place.
- What integration are you using?
- How are you configuring the lights for said integration?
hi Petro, Iām amazed that youāre helping us so quickly to be honest, thank you ā¦ letās take a birds-eye view ā¦
Iām using (say 100-off) box standard Pi4ās + HA as the OS ā¦ imagine we have 100 PI4ās - one for each āproductā / ācustomerā ā¦ that weāre shipping to 100 customers ā¦ so we need to set-up EACH product with itās OWN set of 4 TUYA led-ccts ā¦ (so this is NOT a setup for a single āhomeā at all - itās a method for setting up 100 āhomesā)
- i need an efficient / simple / fast way of configuring EACH HA instance - all are identical - bar the entity-IDs of the bulbs
So each āinstanceā only references in itās ācodeā āL1, L2, L3, L4ā (etc) ā¦ and we need to āmapā the actual entity-IDs of the bulbs to L1, L2, etc for each product ā¦
Am i making sense ? or have I lost the plot? Iām new to HA but Iāve been designing automatic control systems for the automotive-industry and railways for many years
I understand that HA was envisioned for the homes of 'DIYāers ā¦ Iām looking to use it for APPLIANCES - lots of them - feedback very much appreciated
I understand your use case. I understand that you want to set it up automatically. Iām trying to provide an answer, but you keep repeating the same thing instead of answering the questions Iām asking. You do not need to repeat your use case again. I understand you want to mass deploy things. I understood it the first time. I am at the point of near maximum frustration because you arenāt actually answering anything.
so what do you suggest? what would you do?
THAT DEPENDS ON THE INTEGRATION.
Petro, please cut me some slack here - donāt get too frustrated ā¦ iāve swapped from node-red to HA 4-weeks back ā¦ Iām using the box-standard HA OS setup for a PI4 ā¦ using TUYA (smart-life) integration
how am I configuring lights for said integration > atm we just ādiscoverā lights in smartlife - then use the discovered entity-IDs to sort our automations - if missed your question pls explain
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TUYA does not have a yaml based onboarding process. So you have to go through the UI to add the devices. I.e. Thereās no way to setup the TUYA without touching the UI. Meaning thereās no way to quickly deploy 100ās of HA installations in 1 go. During setup process, you can simply rename the devices (Which will rename the entity_ids), or use your light group āwork aroundā. I donāt know why youād bother with the light group work around when setting up TUYA would take longer than renaming 4 lights.
If you integrate lights via any YAML integration, you can apply a setup without even starting home assistant. This includes naming the devices and potentially adding a unique_id (depending on the integration). Both set the name of the entity_id.
i dont want to test your patience, so if you feel youāve helped enough please do say ā¦ my current approach is as follows - if you think this can be faster / easier perhaps you have an example links that may help us?
- we have a fully working PI4-HA āapplianceā 001with 20 actuators/sensors - save to backup āha-001āā¦
- power up appliance 002 ā¦ restore from backup ā¦ save as āha-002ā
- we have an automatically produced configuration.yaml file where entity-IDs are mapped to the standard simple names (entity-IDs are retrieved from our data-base of components)
- that config-file is applied to Pi4-HA appliance - tested - saved
- rinse and repeat for the 100 appliances
many thanks