Light group, UI element or backend configuration

Configuration
1

Newbie question here.
I have searched but not seen the answers . so …

I’m setting up my first Home assistant (hassio) , and I’d like to group all my plug-in switches in my living room as that is how my lamps are connected. I want to automate them by clock and sunrise/set, I’m not interested in a GUI for control.
But I try to do most my work in the admin GUI.

So, some questions,
Are light groups UI elements or backend configuration elements? Or both?
Is it the same for groups?

Can I set up automation rules for these by using the UI?
I’ve been able to turn on switch by time , but I don’t see my configured light group anywhere.
Is it somewhere there?

If there are info on this, point me in the right direction.

2

Hi @eleson! Welcome to HA and the forum!

Let’s start with asking, have you read the following?

3

Hi,
thanks for responding!
As you see my, question is about groups but indirectly also about understanding the concepts and the architecture. I come from OH2, so I try to get a grip of the similarities and the differences.

I’ve read the two latter ones, As I am not interested in a UI at this point, only in letting the sun and clock controlling my lamps, so I haven’t read the Lovelace doc.
Should I read that also to understand the scope of [light] groups?

Both the Group and Light Group refers a lot to how these will be displayed, hence my question about these being UI elements.
That and the fact that the light group didn’t show up in this dialogbox:
HA-automation

from configuration.yaml : 
light: !include lights.yaml

from lights.yaml : 

    - platform: group
      name: LivingRoomLights
      entities:
         - light.SideBoardLamp

I was kind of expecting to see LivingRoomLights as one of the devices but mayber that was wrongly assumed?
If working in the yaml files with vi is the way to go that is fine also but I wanted to give the UI a chance.

4

For the most part groups and light groups are backend things. However, there are frontend aspects to them (how they are displayed, etc.)

Configuring things via the UI is incomplete at best. E.g., the one snippet you showed is extremely new or at least the device-based stuff, which is really a UI-oriented “layering” on top of entities.

If you want to learn HA, and especially if you have any programming background, you might want to start with https://developers.home-assistant.io/, especially the architecture section. Then read the standard docs.

It seems the UI has made great strides recently, and is changing for the good. But most users I think still directly edit YAML files, especially if you want to do anything beyond the basics. Maybe when the 1.0 release comes out…

1 Like
5

Thanks , those architecture doc’s was exactly what I needed!

1 Like