Values reported as strings instead of numbers?

Configuration
1

Hi all,

So the title of this post ends with a question mark because I’m not sure what’s going on. I have a number of devices integrated to my home assistant. Quite a few of them seem to report their values as strings in HAss so instead of

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I get

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But this isn’t uniform. Not all my ZWave devices do it. Only one of my power devices does it. Two MySensors devices (out of 14)…

It doesn’t seem to be related to the units of measurement used. I also can’t see anything that I might have added in a template or in the config for recorder/history that might be doing this.

Anyone suggest what is it I can’t spot?

Thanks

Steve

2

The state value of all entities is a string. Its attributes might be other types but not state.

Graphing behaviour is influenced by unit_of_measurement. The absence of it will cause the entity’s graph to be the default bar chart.

3

Graphing behaviour is influenced by unit_of_measurement.

That’s exactly my problem. I have, for example, a number of Aeotec Multisensors. NONE of them have any special configuration. All of them are set to the binary report setting. 4 out of the 9 report their measurements like this. And this is where my confusion is coming from - if it was all of them I’d understand. But it’s some of them for no obvious reason.

The devices all appear in HA as sensor.aeon_labs_zw100_multisensor_6_temperature_X

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So they all say “unit_of_measurement: °C” but they don’t all plot graphs.

Steve

4

Have the 4 never displayed a line chart or is this new behavior?

Based on some puzzling results I’ve had, if the sensor’s history contains data that is considered to be non-numeric then it influences the chart (i.e. defaults to bar chart). When that funky data gets purged from the database, the graphing becomes a line chart. However, that may not be the issue here. I had been experimenting with MQTT Sensor’s and Template Sensors (where I had control over unit_of_measurement) whereas you’re using sensor’s defined by an integration.

5

Bit late to this thread, but I’m seeing this problem too… even just after restarting HA, 1 value changed from a numerical graph trend to a “digital” bar… and all other values are fine.

It was fine before the reboot.

And it has a unit of measurement.

In my case, I’m trying to generate some averages and I’m converting a temperature into average, change average and rate of change… all 3 statistics are from the same source value, all 3 have units but 1 became the digital bar…

To me, this is a bug :slight_smile:

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