Entire dummy instance?

Hi everybody,

I could have sworn that there was a plugin for this in HACS, but I cannot find it any longer… but I’m sure somebody here will know what to do :slight_smile:

I have a working Home Assistant instance. I built up on it since first using Home Assistant, so it is cluttered and has many things I’d like to do differently; however, many things are intertwined and I cannot simply change one thing at a time, but would have to change everything that does together at once - which is a bit difficult for me.

Is there a way I can simulate all my existing entities (switches, sensors, lights, everything!)? This way, I could run a fresh instance in a docker container, configure everything as it should be, then -when everything is done- copy the configurations to my actual Home Assistant?

Let’s say I have an automation based on binary_sensor.draussen_haustuer_occupancy, with a condition based onsensor.draussen_haustuer_illuminance, which will switch light.draussen_haustuer_light and switch.draussen_garten depending on occupancy and illuminance value…

I could use input_boolean for occupancy and manually change the numeric value for illuminance, but that would not allow me to copy this configuration later, as I’d have to change every single entity_id before it’d work with my actual config. If I could create dummy entities for all these, name them what they need to actually be named (see above), test everything and see that it works, then I’d be able to copy the configuration one to one, just replace the dummy entities with the actual (already existing) entities.

As stated above, I am sure I stumbled upon such a plugin/integration as was very excited, but now I can’t find it any longer and am mostly positive that I didn’t just dream having seen it :wink:

Thanks for your ideas :slight_smile:

I think there are a couple of options.

One is setting up two HA instances in a master/slave configuration.

the other is to setup mqtt event stream or mqtt state stream depending on your needs.

I’ve never looked into the first (master/slave) I’ve only seen the thread referenced so it’s possible that it actually, in fact, uses the second (statestream or eventstream) to accomplish it. I have used the second (statestream) in a limited capacity for testing and it works well for passing data between two HA instances.

you should be able to find info on those by googling.