State of group is “Unknown” even when group member´s state is known?

1

I have created two template sensors to read the wifi and I’m getting the right state home from them.

image
However, when I tried to use them in a group within the group.yaml it is not picking up the state as home correctly but showing Unknown

  name: Residents
  entities:
    - sensor.pixel_4_xl_wifi
    - sensor.iphone_wifi

What should I do ?

2

Use device tracker entities instead.

3

I want to check presence based on a number of sensors. Connection to Wifi is one of those ones.

template:
  - sensor:
    - name: "iphone_wifi"
      state: >
        {% if states('sensor.s_iphone_ssid') == "TP-LINK" %}
          home
        {% else %}
          not_home
        {% endif %}
  - sensor:
    - name: "pixel_4_xl_wifi"
      state: >
        {% if states('sensor.pixel_4_xl_wifi_connection') == "TP-LINK" %}
          home
        {% else %}
          not_home
        {% endif %}

I think the question is why the group entries in group.yaml are not getting read in Resident ?

4

Your group is working as expected.

If you read the docs for Old-Style Groups, just below the “Configuration Varaiables” section you will see a list of domains that support calculation of group state… sensor is not on that list. If you want entities whose group state can be calculated, you can’t use a sensor. The easiest option is to switch to a template binary sensor with device_class set to presence. Another option is to change your method and use a manual device_tracker entity.

1 Like
5

I was tying to use the setup as explained in here

Why my groups not working as per the thread. Is it because not supported any more?
How to do the manual device_tracker as I want the multiple sensor to feed to tracking.

6

Thanks @Didgeridrew.
Now this is what I have done. Created template sensors as:

template:
  - binary_sensor:
      - name: "pixel_4_xl_wifi"
        device_class: presence
        state: >
          {% if states('sensor.pixel_4_xl_wifi_connection') == "TP-LINK" %}
            on
          {% else %}
            off
          {% endif %}   
      - name: "iphone_wifi"
        device_class: presence
        state: >
          {% if states('sensor.iphone_ssid') == "TP-LINK" %}
            on
          {% else %}
            off
          {% endif %}

and the group as

residents:
  name: Residents
  entities:
    - binary_sensor.pixel_4_xl_wifi
    - binary_sensor.iphone_wifi
    - device_tracker.me

Now Residents is either on or off based on whether of the entities in Resident are Home or Away
I hope this is how it is supposed to work… right ?
Now the question is how to customize the Resident group to Home or Away based on on or off. Can this be done in customise.yaml or can this be done for binary group sensor like mine ?

7

The author of the article you posted hasn’t read the docs or actually tested what they are proposing. When you make a group containing device trackers and sensors the state of the device trackers will be calculated, the sensors will be completely ignored.

Also, it hasn’t been necessary to use a group as shown in the article you link for a while. Instead of using integrations properly, the author is essentially faking a router-based device tracker. For automations/scripts, you can simply reference the state of zone.home using a Numeric state condition to determine whether the house is occupied or not. The state of zone.home returns a count of how many person entities are currently ‘home’.

Use stationary trackers:
Stationary trackers have precedence over gps trackers for the home zone. Including them will give you more reliable presence tracking. If there is an integration for your router, use it. From your post it looks like you have a TP-Link router. If it is a Deco, I suggest the HA TP-Link Deco custom integration. Also, consider using Bluetooth-based approaches.

Make sure your mobile app is configured correctly:
Improperly configured Internal URL, Location, and Accuracy settings can have significant effects on the reliability of presence detection based on the mobile app.

Use a better method:
If, for whatever reason, you can’t include a stationary tracker or change the configuration of your mobile app, check out the HA Composite Tracker custom integration. It will create a device tracker entity from your binary sensors which can be applied to your person, allowing whatever sensors you use to influence zone.home as described above.

8

Thanks for providing another option. My TP-Link router is not Deco so end up using the HACS repo. I configured GitHub - pnbruckner/ha-composite-tracker: Home Assistant Composite Device Tracker
however, it is giving me Away value when one of the other sensors is still home

composite:
  default_options:
    time_as: device_or_local
  trackers:
    - name: Me
      require_movement: false
      time_as: local
      entity_id:
        - device_tracker.fas
        - device_tracker.pixel_4_xl
        - entity: binary_sensor.pixel_4_xl_wifi
          all_states: true

In the above scenario, it works fine using the update state from the binary_sensor but not from others. So when I turned off the wifi which was the binary_sensor the value from binary_sensor updated to off. I kept mobile data on so the other two gps based sensors Life360 and companion gps have home so I was expecting the device_tracker.me (which is a composite of the all three sensors) should be home but it started showing Away. The last update id it used was binary_sensor, where it should use the other gps based sensors to show me as Home. I takes roughly 15-20 mins (sometimes even longer) before it gets updated from the companion app gos sensor. Despite, that I have changed the frequency of update from app to 1 min frequency
Edit: I have fed all of these to HA person sensor.