SkyConnect: button only available via event (not binary_sensor)?

Hardware
1

Hi everybody,

I just received my SkyConnect and connected it to my Homeassistant. Then I paired a Xiaomi Aqara button to test it. It found the device and lists it:

grafik
grafik2016Ă—1057 208 KB

As you can see, there are only Battery and Identify (those other two entities were disabled from the start); however, in logbook, you can see that the button was pushed.

When I look at developer-tools > event, I get this

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grafik1840Ă—1681 187 KB

So the button presses are definitely acknowledged by Homeassistant; but it seems kinda weird to me that I have to work with event here, which seems much more difficult than state. My other zigbee devices are connected through zigbee2mqtt, which gives a binary_sensor_<button> entity…

Can I configure SkyConnect so that it will provide a binary sensor entity? I wasn’t able to find that much information about SkyConnect (the website still just tells you to pre-order, but there are no docs), so I don’t know if this event stuff is a bug or a feature :wink:

2

It is because it is a button you have and not a switch.
A switch can be switched between multiple states.
A button only change state momentarily and then switch back right away.

3

Both? Neither?

This has nothing to do with SkyConnect itself.

It’s just the way ZHA presents buttons, regardless of the coordinator used.

A very unfriendly presentation only a programmer could love.

An automation DEVICE trigger may present the events as options under the trigger select, but I don’t have enough ZHA devices to know if it’s common for all button devices or is quirk dependent.

Screenshot_20221214-105455_Home Assistant
Screenshot_20221214-105455_Home Assistant1080Ă—2280 153 KB

But I generally hate using device triggers due to their reliance on device ID.

1 Like
4

I have two Xiaomi buttons and a Lowes Iris 4 button fob. Both types works the same as just described so it seems common.

1 Like
5

Good to know. I have a single aqara button as well, but it is under z2m in my primary zigbee net. Don’t think I ever tested it with ZHA.

I mostly use lutron caseta picos where I need a button, and until recently they were event dependent as well. A recent update exposes button entities, but I’m not sure that really helps as an automaton trigger.

1 Like
6

Thank you! This is it, or at least the closest to what I was looking for.

A very unfriendly presentation only a programmer could love.

:100:

Your screenshot translates to something like this in yaml

device_id: asdbafasdffadasdasd
domain: zha
platform: device
type: remote_button_short_press
subtype: remote_button_short_press

Which is fine. But this code below is much easier to write when one is not using the web UI, but uses separate files for different things

trigger:
  - platform: state
     entity_id: binary_sensor.my_button
     to: button_1_single

I always know my entity_ids, because I name them something like <room>/<usage> (= Livingroom/Wallswitch), but these random device_ids must be looked up (at least when having countless entities and/or not having perfect memory).

You are right. But while a button cannot have a state in a way a switch does, it can be handled differently; zigbee2mqtt would send something like button_1_single when pressing button 1 once, then immediately revert to none (or an empty string? not sure atm). So the button has a default state that it is always set to, and the “event state”, to which it only switches for ~1 second when the event happens.

So I understand what you are saying, but I still find it weird that HA handles it this way. If I hadn’t come from zigbee2mqtt, I guess this would be logical and fine, but having worked a certain way for years makes this solution feel very clumsy (but @jerrm s solution is something I can get used to).