I want to track my house consumption on an hourly basis. For this I am considering to create a template sensor that will be updated by an automation. The sensor itself will use a power meter device (an Aeotec Home Energy Meter) as its data source for calculating the hourly consumption.
I still have to figure out if it is possible to create sensors that are an array (to store 24 different values in a single sensor), or if I need to create 24 different sensors for this purpose.
Nonetheless, my main question is: how can I create a sensor that uses other sensors are their source of values, but are not triggered for update based on those sensors’ changes? As I mentioned, the whole point is to update them only through an automation.
The template sensor will be updated by any change in an entity_id. if supplied. Otherwise home assistant will attempt to determine what to monitor from the template.
If you set a really long scan interval (months, years) you are then free to only update the template sensor using an automation action that calls the update entity service.
An interesting wrinkle is; that if you specify an entity id: it will only look at that for update trigger (ignoring everything else)
So specify ‘itself’ as an entity id then write your automation to update hourly (or whenever) and then use tom’s update entity service
Not actually used this myself so report back any issues