Manual input of meter reading in Energy dashboard

[nick2k3]

Hi everyone,
I am trying to setup a couple of input_number entities for manually* grabbing the values of the gas and water meter in my home.

So far I have:

1. set up a input_number helper : input_number.gas_reading
   this contains the always-increasing read value from the meter
2. set up a sensor template to turn the input_number in a sensor (to be fed into the utility meter entity in step 3)

  template:
  - sensor:
    - name: 'Gas reading sensor'
      unit_of_measurement: 'm³'
      state: >
        {{ '%4.4f'%states('input_number.gas_reading') | float }}
      state_class: total_increasing
      unique_id: 'gas_reading_sensor'
      device_class: 'gas'

3. created a utility meter to generate a daily usage sensor.gas_daily_consumption as I understand it’s needed to be accepted by the Energy Dashboard
   
   
   
   
   

Now, when I try to add this sensor to the Energy Dashboard, it simply does not appear in the list.
I can instead add sensor.
gas_reading_sensor, however I am not sure if this is what is supposed to be entered in the Energy dashboard.
I can see that sensor.gas_daily_consumption has statistics, so I don’t understand why the Energy dashboard does not accept it.

Can someone see what am I doing wrong?

*well, semi manually since I use iOS shortcuts to OCR the read value and submit it to HA.
I cannot use any HW to automate because the counter are in a shared space in my apartment building and don’t have any network/power there.

[tom_l]

@nick2k3

created a utility meter to generate a daily usage sensor.gas_daily_consumption as I understand it’s needed to be accepted by the Energy Dashboard

No it is not required. You can use your sensor.

Utility meters are useful for converting an always increasing value to hourly/daily/monthly/etc… totals.

The energy dashboard can work with always increasing sensors.

[nick2k3]

Thanks! that’s useful to know!

One more thing: can I avoid setting up the template :

template:
  - sensor:
    - name: 'Gas reading sensor'
      unit_of_measurement: 'm³'
      state: >
        {{ '%4.4f'%states('input_number.gas_reading') | float }}
      state_class: total_increasing
      unique_id: 'gas_reading_sensor'
      device_class: 'gas'

and instead use a helper?

I am afraid that with the helper I cannot set up the state_class and device_class which I think are needed by the energy dashboard (again, read in some previous thread, not sure if this is still true)

[tom_l]

@nick2k3

…with the helper I cannot set up the state_class and device_class which I think are needed by the energy dashboard

That is correct. So you need the template sensor.