Newbie question about entities and sensors

Configuration
1

Hi,
i’m new here… maybe somebody can explain me why entities of type “binary_sensor” (or other sensors), which are defined in configuration.yaml, are not displayed in the UI under “Configuration/Entities” ?

Only under “/developer-tools/state” i can see the sensors.

My config:

binary_sensor:
  - platform: template
    sensors:
      sun_up:
        entity_id:
          - sun.sun
        value_template: >-
          {{ is_state("sun.sun", "above_horizon") }}

sensor:
  - platform: yr
    name: MyTestSensor
    forecast: 24
    monitored_conditions:
      - temperature
      - symbol

Thx!

2

Hi @hosweho - welcome to the HA community. I’m afraid I can’t answer your question directly, but I do have alternatives…

I normally look in the top right three dots menu for Unused Entities, where binary sensors appear. Or I use the legacy /states url to show the pre-lovelace page, where the binaries are the blue ones at the top

3

Under “Configuration -> Entities” you only see entities created through integrations, mostly physical devices. Under “Developer Tools -> States” you will see all items.

4

Integrations that are discovered… e.g an mqtt device uses the mqtt integration but it can be discovered or manually configured. If discovered it will use the entity registry (.storage) and appear in the Configuration sub menus. If you set the device up manually using yaml it does not use the entity registry and will not (yet) appear in the Configuration sub menus.

1 Like
5

Thanks! Now i understand the difference between “discovered” and “manually configured” devices.