KNX Why do I have only entities but no devices?

1

Hi,
I’m new to Home Assistant which I’m currently evaluating as alternative to OpenHab. So far I’m very impressed and many things are running fine right out of the box, e.g. the HUE integration is great.

However, I’m struggling with KNX integration. So far I have this test configuration:

knx:
  light:
  - name: 'arbeitszimmer.deckenlicht'
    address: '0/0/50'

Which works and provides me an entity with the name “light.arbeitszimmer_deckenlicht”. I can use this entity to turn on and off the light and all the other things that are possible with entities. What really makes me headaches is what is neccessary to also have a device entry for the KNX managed light as I have for all my Philips HUE devices.

I must admit that I’m not yet completely familiar with the concept of devices and entities. But when I try to setup some automations, I’ve learned that entities without devices are not as easy to integrate as if I would have both. Sure I can work around this limitations with scripts and scenes but this makes the setup much more complex.

Any hint is greatly appreciated!

2

Afaik the (fairly new) devices are only available if the integration supports the (also fairly new) UI configuration (config flow), which is not supported by knx.
As I personally have no other devices than knx, I don’t know what the differences/downsides are.

3

Thanks for the explanation. Now I understand why I didn’t find this configuration option.

Actually, devices seem to support some specific features like allocation to rooms and direct binding to actions in automations which seem to be missing in entities without devices. As a new user of home assistant I try to configure most parts with the GUI which is somehow limited when using KNX integration.

Since the KNX integration and the configuration has changed recently, a lot of information available in the internet is outdated and not working any longer which makes it tricky to configure the KNX devices/entities with YAML. That’s why I started with the GUI and discovered this limitations compared to e.g. HUE integration.

4

Is there a known workaround or howto to get the KNX entities linked to a device?

5

Nope. See 2 posts above - nothing has changed except maybe for the term “fairly new”.