Camera not showing up on the UI when part of a group

Configuration
1

I’ve been using HA for a few weeks now. It’s an excellent piece of software.

I’m not sure whether this is a config, or config and UI issue.

I created a camera: in my configuration.yaml (using the ffmpeg platform, in case this matters). By default (not exactly sure of this) it shows a snapshot preview on the Lovelace UI.

I also have a PIR sensor and an LED to indicate when motion is detected. This all works fine.

I want the camera preview, the LED switch and my associated automation to show up together, so I created a group:

security:
  name: Security
  control: hidden
  entities:
    - camera.security_camera
    - switch.motion_led
    - automation.motion_snapshots

The LED and automation show up fine, but the camera preview still sits in its own card. I couldn’t find anything in the docs to say using a camera entity in a group is prohibited (I also found some examples where it seems people have done this, but can’t see how).

I thought of using the “Configure UI” option on the HA menu which will create a ui-lovelace.yaml file from what I understand, just to see how that card is configured, but I like that fact that if I don’t do this, HA will add new elements automatically (if I was sure how to revert to the automatic way of doing things I would try it).

I also see no errors in the log.

I’m not sure whether only using groups is the right way to do this, or whether I should create custom cards (and on that note, look into nested groups).

My configuration.yaml contains an empty default_view: section.

I’m not using hass.io or another image. I have HA 0.100.2 installed.

Could anybody point me in the right direction?

2

I solved my issue by just configuring Lovelace in YAML mode, but it would still be nice to understand the default behaviour a little better. I realise I confused some terms above, so I’ll rephrase the original question:

If you’re not using the YAML mode to configure the frontend AND if you create groups (of entities), these groups will show up automatically on the same card (a card per group). But, by adding a camera entity with e.g. a switch and an automation to the same group, the camera will not display as part of that card, but instead remain a separate card. After I switched to the YAML mode, I could then see it was creating a picture-entity card.

While the warning on the frontend when trying to choose the “Configure UI” option from the menu top right was a bit of a deterrent: It made me think I should prefer not to configure my own UI, when the reality is that if you want to do anything interesting, you simply have to. I don’t think anybody doing any home automation with a real purpose can stick with the auto UI mode for long. It’s very useful for starting, but I would recommend to everyone to dive deep into the very good docs soon after getting your basic system running. (Not a criticism, but hopefully a useful pointer.)