Time Sensor showing as Unknown, but data is correct

Configuration Frontend
1

I have a ‘Battery Time Remaining’ sensor I created to give an estimate of house battery charge. In the Template section of Dev Tools I can see that the code works and returns an hr:min format.

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However, as an Entity, it returns/displays only ‘Unknown’ as the result.
I’m relatively new to HA, so I’ve very likely i’ve done something silly or just missed something altogether.

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Any advice would be most welcome.

Thanks for all the help I’ve already received by reading other’s posts

2

Here’s the code directly from the configuration.yaml file:

  - sensor:
      - name: "Battery Time Remaining"
        unit_of_measurement: "Hr"
        state: >
          {% set percent = states('sensor.batt_average_soc') | float(0) / 100.0 | float(0) %}
          {% set number = 2 | float(0) %}
          {% set energy = 5 | float(0) %}
          {% set reserve = (20 | float(5)) / 100.0 %}
          {% set charge = ((percent - reserve) * number * energy) | float(0) %}
          {% set a = states('sensor.Battery_Charge_Power') | float(0) / 1000 %}
          {% set current_power = a %}
          {% set decimal_hours = charge / current_power %}
          {% set minutes = (decimal_hours % 1 * 60) | round(0) %}
          {{ '{:2}:{:02}'.format(decimal_hours | int(00), minutes | int(00)) }}
3

??? a sensor’s id with capitals?

4

I’ve updated it to be all lower case, but it didn’t throw any errors with the caps.

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5

What is “it”? Dev tools? It may not throw errors - but the template sensor will be undefined…

6

‘it’ was the Dev Tool Template simulator. It’s given me errors for any other mistake, I think.
I’ve changed it now anyway and same issue. The Template preview shows Hr:Min return, but the sensor itself is ‘Unknown’.

7

Remove this line from the sensor’s configuration:

unit_of_measurement: "Hr"

If you include unit_of_measurement then it expects the sensor’s value to be numeric. However, in your case, it’s not numeric but a string in this format 6:40 and that’s why it reports unknown.

1 Like
8

Not related to the main issue:
I also wonder what is a meaning of using “float(xxxx)” after calculations?
Usually “float(default=xxxx)” is used to convert a state or an attribute.
Same about “int(00)”.

9

Removing the Units has done it!!! I was thinking that might be it. Thanks for the tip regarding string vs numeric. I should have twigged it when the Template return was also showing the first few lines of code.

As for the code, it’s basically a copy-paste from this thread that I modified what I thought might suit my install best - Solar battery run time till empty - #39 by ziptbm