Person, home and not_home

Configuration
1

Hi,

Before yesterday, I always used my device tracker for my phone to track my presence. In the Lovelace UI, it was showing as Home or Away (even if the real state was home/not_home).

I have now create a Person for me and assigned my phone device tracker to it. The weird thing is that the Person state is showing home/not_home in the Lovelace UI instead of showing Home/Away. Even weirder, the phone device tracker still show Home/Away correctly.

Is that an issue with the Person component?

2

Anyone has an idea for this? Should I raise an issue for this?

3

Hi
Same here home / not home.

4

What are your expectations? For it to show home/away in the UI?

5

Yes, same as my other device tracker.

6

The new person functionality is in it’s infancy. I don’t think it is getting executed through the same code a device tracker. There are other issues with person, i.e. it doesn’t show you what zone you are in. I do not know for certain, but I believe this will change over time.

So with that being said, you could get around this currently by making a template sensor. But then in the UI, you’d need to use the sensor in all the places you wanted to use the person.

It’s a bandaide, but it will get you what you want.

sensor:
- platform: template
  sensors:
    my_person_bandaide:
      value_template: "{{ 'Home' if is_state('person.x','home') else 'Away' }}"

You’re also welcome to report the issue with person on Github. I thought there would be some reported issues on this, but I don’t see any. Might be advantageous to get it on paper.

EDIT: Just replace ‘person.x’ with whatever your person name is. You can also add other fields to the template as well

2 Likes
7

It’s probably just not set up to show like that in the UI. The actual state of device trackers is the same home/not_home but the UI knows to show it as Home/Away (see here).

I don’t see anything in there for person, so it’s just going to show the actual state in the UI. It probably just didn’t get updated when the person component was added.

8

Yep, you must be right. Just dug in further and found the issue on HA polymer. So the good news is that it’s been reported

9

So, it’s needed to create a new template sensor to have this

I used to use this way templates:, with a custom-card, but it shouldn’t work in Lovelace, right?

person.x:
  icon: mdi:human-male
  templates:
    icon_color: >
       if (state === 'home') return 'rgb(255, 0, 0)';
       return 'rgb(0, 255, 0)';
     _stateDisplay: >
        if (state === 'home') return 'A casa';
        return 'Fuori casa';

So this is the only way, creating a new template sensor?

Thanks

10

@Mariusthvdb might know if that template will work in Lovelace. I believe it does but he might have a better explanation.

11

Thanks for finding the issue. It’s good to know that is not only on my side.

12

I’ve updated the Custom-ui from here and now the state template seems to work, it doesn’t work instead, the icon_color change

_stateDisplay: has been replaced by state:

So now I have

person.x:
  icon: mdi:human-male
  templates:
    icon_color: >
       if (state === 'home') return 'rgb(255, 0, 0)';
       return 'rgb(0, 255, 0)';
    state: >
       if (state === 'home') return 'A casa';
       if (state === 'not_home') return 'Fuori casa';

state: works, icon_color: doesn’t. I’ve tried also using the color name

And tried also what suggested in another thread

I don’t use the else since I’m using Life360 as device tracker and this is reporting also other states.

13

regarding icon_color: not working I found that there is an issue already opened.

14

that would be good news, where is this documented? Not on the link you provided…?

15

I am not sure if it has been replaced, but reading the examples I saw it was using the state: and I gave it a try and it’s working…

16

state: is documented here: https://github.com/andrey-git/home-assistant-custom-ui/blob/master/docs/features.md#template-attributes

Be ware, there is a major difference between actually changing the state (which this does) and changing the display of the state (_stateDisplay obviously…). As the author states, it can have performance implications, but more importantly, it interferes with the internal state handling in HA.

so, _stateDisplay: hasn’t been replaced by state: which has always been there. They are different, and state: should be used with care.

see this binary_sensor, used with _stateDisplay:

51
51976×304 39 KB

used with state:

44
44984×296 41 KB

don’t think it is very wise to use state: unless you really really keep an eye for that, it messes with internal affairs and logic.

We might just have to accept _stateDisplay has been deprecated and won’t come back to regular HA (dixit @andrey himself)

17

You’re right.

So now I’m changing the state and not showing something else based on a state value.

I will remove this customization hoping that some day it will be possible to have something similar to _stateDisplay also in Lovelace…

Thanks

18

I think I may be having a similar issue.

As I type this, I have one device tracker (via my home wifi) which correctly says I’m ‘not_home’, but a second device tracker (Owntracks GPS) which correctly says I’m at ‘Work’. I am using Zones for home and work.
But my Person entity says I’m ‘not_home’, instead of at ‘Work’.

I’m on 0.92, and I could have sworn it was working in a previous version.