Categorizing entities - Which direction would you go if you were starting new?

[Aston01]

I don’t have so many devices yet that I can’t pivot and make prudent changes, but as I add more of varying types I am starting to notice the need for some form of hierarchy/categorization to keep things easily identifiable.

My top four devices account for ~300 entities between them

• Energy Monitor #1 w/ 60+ entities
• Energy Monitor #2 w/ 60+ entities
• Irrigation Controller #1 w/ 100+ entities
• Irrigation Controller #2 w/ 60+ entities

And while the HA Docs give some basic information for simple scenarios I start to cringe just thinking about how messy it could be to scale wrong

The options I have seen so far.

#1 - Opt for a lengthy naming structure that defines the pertinent information

#2 - Use custom attributes as has been recommended before (but others have commented be “it is not quick or easy to do at scale”)

Recommended ways to manage devices and entities names

I’m not an advocate of using an entity’s name to store metadata. In other words, I don’t recommend creating an entity name packed with its characteristics. sensor.manufacturer_model_identifier_color_size_location_bla_bla_etc When the time comes to select entities based on their characteristics, the resulting template can become quite messy. What I suggest is to add metadata as custom attributes to an entity. Simple add them to customize.yaml or via Configuration > Customizations. For example…

#3 - Make do with something temporary until something like label support is added someday.

I am open to any recommendations and I am fully aware that I am not familiar enough with the platform to know the correct way to address this issue without a decent risk of making a complete mess that would further complicate my learning curve when I went to use something like Node-Red or InfluxDB/Grafana to work with that data.

Knowing what you know now… Which direction would you go?

[123 (Taras)]

@Aston01

but others have commented be “it is not quick or easy to do at scale”)

To be clear, one person made that comment, so it’s not like there’s a general consensus on the matter.

Option 1 is easy and convenient but can lead to long and unwieldy entity_ids. Plus if you ever want to add another category to several entities, you’ll have to rename each entity, one by one, via the UI. In Option 2 you just add a line in customize.yaml and copy-paste it next to however many other entities you want.

Option 3 appears to have died in development so I wouldn’t bother waiting for it to materialize.