Permanent Entities De-coupled from Device Entities

Configuration
1

What am I looking for?

A way to set “permanent” entity names that are independent of the device name or interface (z-wave, zigbee, mqtt, etc). I expect these entities to be permanent, essentially acting as helpers for the “temporary” entities tied to a specific device.

For example: Door Binary Sensor > binary.sensor.entity01

Why do I need this?

I’m working in an environment where the source data can change, but the environment is relatively rigid, and I need to keep historical data for it. I want to de-couple these things from each other to make replacements easy and also very flexible so I can select the best device for the job.

I also want to make sure that all of the automation I build are not disturbed, or very minimally disturbed.

Options I’ve considered.

  • Use the MQTT broker to set topics in YAML and from what I understand you can tie this topic to a specific entity. I would prefer to not have to touch YAML too much and would like to be as close to what the future of Home Assistant will most likely support (which I am not very familiar with).
2

I change devices and keep the same entity IDs, but I have to name the devices the same as before as the integration builds the entity IDs based on the device name.

But, even when not the case I’ve renamed entities and then adjusted the DB to use the same “meta” ids so I retain the history. (I just did this with an outdoor temp sensor that failed but I wanted to use a new name.)

I thought there was a way in the UI to do that, but not seeing it right now. I’m fine modifying the DB directly.

(By the way, you might read the comments (now delayed) in the beta about naming. Not really that related, but I just mention this because you noted wanting entity names that are independent of devies names.)