Recommended ways to manage devices and entities names

Configuration Z-Wave
13

I’m not an advocate of using an entity’s name to store metadata. In other words, I don’t recommend creating an entity name packed with its characteristics.

sensor.manufacturer_model_identifier_color_size_location_bla_bla_etc

When the time comes to select entities based on their characteristics, the resulting template can become quite messy.

What I suggest is to add metadata as custom attributes to an entity. Simple add them to customize.yaml or via Configuration > Customizations.

For example:

sensor.kitchen_remote_battery:
  integration: hue
  type: 'CR2450'

sensor.bedroom_remote_battery:
  integration: hue
  type: 'CR2450'

For my purposes, I want to know a battery sensor’s integration and the type of battery it uses so I created two custom attributes: integration and type. They will appear as additional attributes when viewing the entity’s attributes.

Here’s a template to select all sensors with a specific battery type (much simpler than trying to parse it out of the entity’s name):

{{ states.sensor | selectattr('attributes.type', 'eq', 'CR2450')
    | list | join(', ') }}

If I have many battery sensors and only want the Hue sensors that use CR2450 batteries:

{{ states.sensor | selectattr('attributes.integration', 'eq', 'hue')
    | selectattr('attributes.type', 'eq', 'CR2450')
    | list | join(', ') }}
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