Creating a Sensor

[Mabaelst (Bart Teuwen)]

I have a TP-Link mesh network at home. It allows me to see who’s in which room. Apparently, there are frequent outages, and the devices in that room become unavailable. So, I’d like a sensor that only adjusts when the device is available. I’ve been trying this for days now, but I can’t figure it out.

Can anyone help me? Thanks for all the replies!

[jackjourneyman (Jack)]

Is there anything in this thread?

Why an availability template is important for energy template sensors

When defining a template sensor for use in the energy dashboard it is important to also use the availability template option. Without this you may see incorrect values in your energy dashboard. For example, consider this template sensor that sums two energy sensors to obtain a total: template: - sensor: - name: "Energy Total" unique_id: 094412db-6903-dead-beef-b40e0e41ea28 device_class: energy state_class: total_increasing unit_of_measurement: kWh …

[Edwin_D]

Another example of a sensor that hides unavailability by keeping the last known value came up here very recently. The same pattern using a trigger based template sensor can be used for all kinds of sensors:

Restarting HA has my template sensors saying unknown state

I don’t know the state off hand until night time. Here is what I came up with, will see tonight if it works: - trigger: - platform: state entity_id: sensor.energy_total_fronius_inverter_1_192_168_4_15 not_to: - unknown - unavailable sensor: - name: "Total Fronius kWh" unique_id: "6e2f379d-5abd-4f1e-a608-05662f0eaeff" …

[sfatula (SteveF)]

Yep, and it is working great! Done multiple restarts, no issues, and when the inverter goes offline each day, no issues.

[Mabaelst (Bart Teuwen)]

@Restarting HA has my template sensors saying unknown state

- unknown

Thank you, it works GREAT for me!!

[Mabaelst (Bart Teuwen)]

Sorry, it’s partially working. When I start it up now, the sensor isn’t updated. How do I fix this?

Thanks for your response.