Relationship between Devices and Entities

Configuration
1

So I just got Home Assistant up and running and I’m trying to set up a few zwave light switches / dimmers and have a very newbie question. I have clicked around the interface a bit and I’m sure I did something for one light that I have not yet done for the other, but for the life of me I can’t figure out what that was.

I have two identical zwave light switches and when I go to Configuration -> Devices I can see them both. When I look at Configuration -> Entities I see both of them of them listed but then I also see one that I named “Porch”. Back in the Devices tab if I click on one of them I get an info page that has both the original switch plus the “Porch” entity listed in the Entities section. The Porch entity has a light icon + a toggle switch that does work to turn the light on and off. So I have two entities that are related to this one device.

I had to stop playing around with HA for the day and now I can’t figure out how I created the Porch entity in the first place. After clicking around the UI a bit, I just can’t seem to find where you create Entities, only view info about existing ones.

Can someone explain how I created it associated it with the switch Device?

Thx for any help!

2

It’s really hard to tell what you are seeing from just your description since you didn’t add any screenshots but…

As far adding entities you typically won’t add an entity manually for hardware that is discovered automatically (like zwave). Those entities are always (should be…) be added automatically by the discovery process of the integration. The “devices” section should list each piece of hardware and list each entity associated with it. If all of the expected entities aren’t there then either the hardware doesn’t support the entity or something went wrong with the inclusion process for the hardware.