Internal devices and device configuration for entities

[dougiteixeira]

It would be really nice for Home Assistant’s overall organization if we could attach an entity to an existing device and/or create internal devices.

For example, attach helper entities that were created to help with automation or for statistics related to entities that already exist on a device.

Or create an internal device to group several helper entities related to a specific use.

I think it could go like this:

1. Add the ability to create devices in current Helpers.
2. Add the ability to include a device in the configuration of entities that are not linked to one. On the frontend it can be similar to the area configuration.

[WallyR (Wally)]

Devices are not really deeply integrated into HA and you should somewhat ignore them.
HA works on entities and there are very few device specific functions, and certainly none for custom devices, so grouping them in devices will make no real difference.

I think devices is mostly for integrations to be able to handle a group of entities, like deleting and creating on connection changes and if you have custom entities, then they might not be handled well by a deletion and later recreation.

[arganto]

See and add you +1 somewhere here as well.

WTH can't I manually assign entities to devices

Some context: The Devices system has always been slightly confusing to me. Everything is fine when a device and all its entities are from a single integration. However, sometimes entities from other integrations are attached to a device that already exists. (E.g. a device tracker from my WiFi AP attaches to the Samsung TV device.) Perhaps this uses MAC addresses to match the devices? It is a very nice feature to have, but it doesn’t work 100% of the time. This results in duplicate devices or “…

Why can't we create custom devices?

Allow the ability to create a custom device which can contain multiple entities. For example defining multiple entities for my smart meter’s MQTT feed results in multiple entities, however it would be great to pull these all together under a single device.

Why can't we add template entities to existing devices?

Template entities are great. However if you need to template a value for a specific device, there’s no way to link it to the original device?

Wth can't I add a helper to a existing device?

I have helpers like input_booleans and input_select that I have made to help control a certain device it would be great if I could just add these entities to the relevant device.