How to change Icons on Map View?

Configuration
1

Hello Home Assistant gurus;
I am very new to Home Assistant (HA) and am in need of some help: I have developed a device that disconnects my Amateur Radio antennas during a lightning storm and reconnects them after the storm has passed. This works great using the Blitzortung.org (near real time strike positions) in HA. I use Node Red in HA to disconnect my antennas whenever there are lightning strike within 35km (approx. 20 miles). See attached screen shot for my HA.

Screenshot 2021-02-26 065411
Screenshot 2021-02-26 0654111118Ɨ701 77.9 KB

Now for the question; how do I change the LS circled icons with a Flash (lightning bolt) icon? If this is possible can someone guide me on how to do it.

Thanks,
Dave

2

You can add customizations to your device trackers using the ā€œcustomize:ā€ section:

example

device_tracker.phone:
  entity_picture: /local/some_picture.png
3

Finity, Thanks for the response. I know very little on the config yaml, however, I will give it a shot and see what I can learn.
Dave

4

Well, not much luck yet, even with the given hint by finity.

tried with:

customize:
  device_tracker.see:
     entity_picture: "/config/dummy.png"

aswell as:

customize_glob:
  "geo_location.lightning_strike_*":
    entity_picture: "/config/dummy.png"

I would have expected at least the last one to work since the geo_locations poplulate my list of entities, since so I expect them to fullfill the requirement being an entity.
If oneā€™s really entitled to customize given trackers such as the ā€œ.seeā€ one ā€¦ Iā€™m completely unsure.

In only HA wouldnā€™t pass the config validation in such cases where everything shows no errors while resulting in simply nothing at all.

5

In the first one you arenā€™t customizing an entity. You are trying to customize a service (device_tracker.see is a service not an entity) so thatā€™s why nothing is changing there.

In the second one try removing the quotes around the file name.

6

No luck, removing quotes simply changed nothing at all. Perhaps itā€™s a problem with the path defined. Who knows is /config really matches the common folder named config just below the root folder?

7

I assume those device trackers are created dynamically?
What is creating them? I donā€™t think you can set a standard icon for all device trackers.
But perhaps if the thing that creates the device trackers also adds the icon. That could perhaps work

8

Ummmā€¦yeah. I completely missed that.

Iā€™m pretty sure you canā€™t reference a file like that.

try putting the picture files in your ā€œ/www/ā€ folder and referencing them as ā€œ/local/dummy.pngā€.

9

Yeah this was the point (in principle) while the result is as ugly as it was before.
What happens now is no matter which size the given picture is, it gets scaled up into the backgrounded circle which depending upon the zoomlevel of the map covers half a state.
The idea was to get small dots similar to lightningmaps.org plotted so that 10 lightning strikes within a range of 20km wonā€™t completely cover the home location by 100%.
One canā€™t have it all, perhaps HA isnā€™t ideal for this specific task.

Nevertheless thanks for the hints given ā€¦ to know about how to display images onto a map is most welcome for some other ideas I got in mind.

1 Like
10

Stefan,
From your answer it looks like you figured it out albeit not the total result you wanted. Can you enlighten me to how you did it? Maybe a snippet of the configuration yaml code you used.
Thanks
Dave

11

Add the following lines to your configuration.yaml

homeassistant:
  customize_glob:
    "geo_location.lightning_strike_*":
       entity_picture: /local/picturefile.png

and place a picture file into the /config/www/ folder matching the filename from above.

Simply as ā€˜finityā€™ described when he/she pointed out to have a look at ā€œCustomizing entitiesā€.

And be warned you wonā€™t loose the circles on the map, all what happens is that besides the ā€œTSā€ which seems to be the shortened friendly_name which gets potted into the cicles is that you see the picture on top of that.
What I did miss in customize is something such as entitly_circle: false or something similar

12

I see what you meanā€¦there is got to be a way to override that original circle LS with just a flash icon in my case. I will continue looking.
Thanks

13

If you want a ā€œflashā€ just download/create a picture of the flash icon you want and set that as the entity picture.

14

Finity,
Unfortunately It just places the flash over the circle
Thanks
Dave

15

What I really wonder ā€¦ the circle must be defined somewhere somehow, perhaps in the theme? I got no idea but Iā€™m pretty sure it doesnā€™t happen from pure imagination. Means since itā€™s defined somewhere itā€™s likely possible to get rid of it.
Perhaps someone could enlighten both of us.
I think Iā€™ll have a look at the themes definitionsā€¦ perhaps itā€™s defined in there?

16

Hello!

I like the idea to override the circles on a map, because they are a bit too large. A smaller coloured dot or just a small simple icon would be nice, maybe even in combination with mouse-over or mouse-click/touch hint. :wink:

If somebody finds a way how to do it, please give a hint. Thank you so much. :+1:

PS:

(no answer there, though, till now)