Group Light and Switches from new UI Helper feature

Configuration
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1

I welcomed the new fucntionality for creating and editing groups from lovelace (or should I say dashboard ui??) however it appears I can only group together entities that are the same type. Specifically you are prompted in the UI to select the type of group and then only have the option to group that entity type. In my groups in YAML I can group together switches and lights for example.

If this is how its intended to be its a bit annoying because in my curent groups in YAML I can have for example my TV and the TV room lamps in the same group and turn them on altogether.

2

I used this method to group an Insteon lamp module (light) and a button on a 6-button keypad (switch).

Configuration - Automation and Scenes - Helpers

Add a helper and change the device type of a switch. Change the switch to a light.

Add another helper and group the two lights.

3

This approach works if the switch being changed to a light is not referenced by other automations. In my case, I have a number of lights and switches that Iā€™d like to a group. I can do so using a groups.yaml file, but not with the new helper tool. If the lights are changed to switches or switches changed to lights so the tool can be used, then existing automations stop functioning. As @privatesam suggests, there should be a way to group lights and switches.

2 Likes
4

@privatesam I did it in three steps

  1. Create a helper to Group all switches that you need to group with the lights.
  2. Create another helper to convert the Group created in Step 1 as Lights
  3. Create another helper to Group the conversion (Switch as Light Group) from Step 2 and all the lights that you need.

Hope this helps

1 Like
5

This just helped me. Thank you!