Dear awesome community,
I have set up a gas sensor via ESPHome which I now want to use as source in a utility meter in order to use the “calibrate service” of the utility meter.
The sensor in ESPHome is configured like this:
globals:
- id: total_pulses
type: int
restore_value: false
initial_value: '0'
binary_sensor:
- platform: gpio
id: internal_pulse_counter
pin:
number: 12
mode:
input: true
pullup: true
internal: true
filters:
- delayed_on: 100ms
on_press:
then:
- lambda: id(total_pulses) += 1;
sensor:
- platform: template
name: "Gas gesamt"
device_class: gas
unit_of_measurement: "m³"
state_class: "total_increasing"
icon: "mdi:fire"
accuracy_decimals: 1
lambda: |-
return id(total_pulses) * 0.1;
The sensor shows up completely right and with the following properties in dev tools:
In my configuration.yaml I have set up the utility meter for this sensor like this:
utility_meter:
gas:
name: "Gaszähler Stand"
source: sensor.gas_gesamt
In dev tools the sensor doesn’t show the device_class. Here are the details:
The problem is that I simply cannot use the Gaszähler Stand utility meter as a gas usage source in the energy dashboard.
This freaks me out, I tried so much.
As I understand I need the correct device_class and unit_of_measurement set on a sensor in order to use it for the energy dashboard. This is true for the source sensor, but not for the utility meter.
Why do I use a utility meter to read a sensor?
The answer is simple: I can use the calibrate service every now and then when I notice that my sensor deviates from the correct reading on my real gas meter. Additionally in the beginning I calibrated the utility meter to the exact value of my gas meter in order to track if my binary sensor in ESPHome works reliably.
Every now and then when my ESPHome ESP32 looses connection or misses a reading I correct that by calibrating that utility sensor again, which in turn adds the correct readings of the ESPHome source on top of the calibrated value pretty reliably.
I just cannot calibrate the source sensor, which delivers absolute values (total_increasing), in home assistant, am I right? As soon as a new value gets delivered by the sensor it gets set in home assistant, no matter if I have set a higher value in the dev tools before (seems right to me).
Anyway, I need a solution for my sensor which is not always correct and I want to correct the readings in home assistant every now and then conveniently in the UI. My best take now is using a utility meter, but I cannot use this one in the energy dashboard and I do not want to use the ESPSensor in the energy dashboard as I cannot correct the value which then doesn’t flow back into the statistics - and that is what I ultimately want, correct statistics incorporating corrected sensor readings.