WTH can't I add a 'battery type' comment/attribute to a device?

Archive Month of "What the heck?!" (2020)
1

I’d really like to be able to add a comment or an attribute of some sort to devices to set how many batteries of which type it takes.

Now every time I have a sensor with low batteries, I need to check the Internet for what kind of batteries it takes, it’s annoying…

To tie this in with other “WTH” about low batteries notifications, it could send a custom notification like “Sensor ABC’s battery is low, prepare 4× AAA batteries” or something like that!

2

I do this now using input-text/input-select objects. Having the field tied directly to the device would be AWESOME.

3

You can do this with customizing already.

homeassistant:
  customize:
    sensor.abc:
      battery_type: '4 x AAA'
5 Likes
4

Nice! I did not think of doing it this way.
I still think it would benefit from a more user-friendly integration though :slight_smile:

1 Like
5

I was about to request the same thing, but this topic came up as similar. It is also helpful to have an entry for rechargables like rechargeable, USB-C or rechargeable, proprietary sitting in drawer D - put the damn thing back!

1 Like