[Custom Card] Helios, real-time 3D sun, clouds, PV production and LiDAR shadows on your home

Share your Projects! Dashboards & Frontend
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21

Hi from Oz
I have recently installed Helios Dashboard - wow, very impressed with this, you have done amazing, useful and visually pleasing design - thank-you.

Im still coming to terms with what and how with the card, have a few questions & observations that may well be my own lack of understanding.

Im operating in Australia, home has Solar but no Battery. Energy from Retailer is measured and billed by four (relevant) measures, three Time of Use Shoulder, Offpeak and Peak, and a fourth seperately measured and billed Hot Water Circuit (Controlled Load 2 or CL2). I have all of these working and setup in Home assistant. (in great detail - tracking costs too))
To the point - having installed Helios:

  1. the 'Standard' view of the home totals (bottom left) - I am unclear what the information is displaying, ie what is standard and what should it be showing?
  2. The labels of some of the same Totals appear incorrect and some missing (or this may be a feature request?). Energy from Grid on Helios appears to (only) show the first TOU energy entry name i have configured in the Energy Tab (as mentioned there are four). I think its correctly showing the combined sum of all three TOU energy entries, but incorrectly using the first Grid Connection senior (in my case "Grid > Offpeak Master". I'll add Helios is showing the sensor name - not the configured Energy Grid sensors 'Display Name' - not a big deal but FYI.
    Same applies to Solar displayed name in Helios.
  3. this may be a feature request or i have not set up correctly - as mentioned i have three TOU configured Grid sensors - is it possible to display all?
  4. As also mentioned Water heater is measured and billed seperately- effectively just like another TOU Grid supply sensor, which is how I have it set in Energy Tab. can this be shown as well? I currently tried setting it up as the additional Helios Custom Entity (which appears to work fine) but - again me, I configured this using the daily energy (not power) sensor - yet is shows in Helios as kW (not kWh which is the unit of the sensor) - note i did initially try the Power sensor, then chnaged to Daily energy sensor - not sure if this caused the unit now displaying incorrectly.

Sorry long message, just trying to be clear - thanks again - love this work and really hoping i can assist constructively be feedback.
Cheers
Loz

22

Hi, in the latest versions above 1.6 the cloud and sun forecast is missing in my dashboard:

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Thanks alot.

23

Adding a warning here for those that use Helios. Double and Triple check the values that Helios displays and compare them directly with your energy dashboard. Helios claims to pull all data directly from the energy dashboard based on its documentation, but this is false. What it does is it pulls some data, and derives the rest by using math.

I'm not entirely sure which parts do what as I am no dev that can read source codes, but based on my own experience using Helios, my solar export readings is entirely wrong, with Helios always displaying different values from what my Energy Dashboard is showing.

I have also been tracking an issue on the Github by others experiencing similar problems and trying to get the dev to bring back setting up custom entities instead with no success. Instead the dev seems to double down on their method that so called displaying the "truth" from your energy dashboard.

So does that mean the HA dashboard is displaying false information and Helios is displaying the real thing?

24

Liked the idea, but the card keeps changing, and my family could not keep up with the changes, and gradually stopped understanding it. so sadly have to remove it, lost the WAF factor