Problem
Synopsis
Currently we have a lot of entities in our Home Assistan, which are only interfere in everyday usage. But can’t be removed or disabled, because other entities or automation are counting on them.
Example
For example I have battery-powered ESPHome project. And since I am tinkering with it periodically, I have sensors for:
- Battery-Voltage
- Battery-Procentage (Template from Battery-Voltage)
- Battery-Procentage-filtered (filter from Battery-Procentage)
- Battery-Procentage-change (trend from Battery-Procentage-filtered)
I want to see those graphs for a day to know, how good or bad my change ESPhome project is. But I don’t need to store them for 10 days, as all other sensors, which I want for statistics and graphs. And I don’t want to see them in all the lists, when I creating new automation, or changing Dashboards.
And, I think, any user who uses Home Assistant heavily have a lot of entities like that: temperature trends, boolean helpers, etc.
What is the problem here
We need to have ability to divide entities, and treat them differently. This will help with system usability and DB size. Don’t see less important sensors everywhere and not store them in Database for long time.
Solution
As developer from different sphere, my solutions can be not in the spirit of HA. Because of that I made this feature request, to understand, if it is something, what community wants. Maybe I will try to help integrate them, if this changes are desirable.
Here is multilevel solution. We can stop on any level, and it still will be good solution for this problems.
Level 1 (Separate type of entities)
Add ability to divide sensor/entity viability type. As example, it can be shadow:true property. Or, for easier future features visibility:shadow or visibility:hidden or any other way to distinguish second class entities.
Example code
- platform: template
name: "My Tempelate"
id: my_tempelate
shadow: true
lambda: |-
...
or
- platform: template
name: "My Tempelate"
id: my_tempelate
visibility: shadow
lambda: |-
...
Level 1.1 (Hide them)
Separate those new entities on separate page, or make them not appear without special checkbox. In that case “Development Tools”, “Entities page” and fronted configuration will feel cleaner.
Level 1.2 (Store them less time)
Store those entities less time. We need them for filters, or other stuff, but don’t need to store 10 days of them.
Example code
recorder:
auto_purge: true
purge_keep_days: 10
purge_shadow_keep_days: 1
Level 2 (Combine sensors)
Lot of times we need sensor from integration only to calculate our own sensor from them.
Level 2.2 (Substitute integration entities)
Add ability to modify integration sensor, without keeping original value. Like, adding filters or templates. It will be just more deep customization.
Example code
homeassistant:
# ...
customize:
# Change C to F and change only once every 2 minutes
sensor.bathroom_temperature:
entity_value: '{{ (value -32 ) * 5/9 }}'
filters:
- filter: time_simple_moving_average
window_size: "00:02"
precision: 1
Level 2.2 (Separate storage period for each sensor)
Then we also can change how long each sensor is stored. We will be able to greatly reduce DB size by storing each sensor only as long, as it needed, but not all sensor for the same duration.
Example code
homeassistant:
# ...
customize:
sensor.bathroom_temperature:
purge_keep_days: 3
Level 3 (Make entities into attribute)
And last, but not least — just make some of our entities — attributes for the other entities. No one need separate entity for temperature trends. It should be just added attribute to existing temperature sensor. And same goes to a lot of entities which are bloating everything. I don’t think this will reduce DB size, but ability to attach entities as attributes will make navigation inside more pleasant.
P.S.
I totally understand, that Home Assistant is open source project, and everything I mentioned can already be done, with AppDeamons, code tinkering, etc. But I think having such things in native functionality will be really good for the project.