WTH can't we have a note field for each device!

Month of "What the heck?!"
1

I have sensors all over the house. Once a year I have to hunt them down to replace a battery. Yet I can never remember where exactly I have hidden them. So, having the opportunity to add a note to a device to register its location??

2

It wouldn’t be pretty, but I think you could do something like this using a text input helper.

3

I would support this

I would also want it optionally exposed to LLMs just like the aliases are.

Reason: LLMs are dumb. (says the AI for a living guy) we all expect the. To work magic but the magic is only as good as you can describe your setup to the AI.

Lists of entities isn’t describing things you also need context.

For instance ‘these entities are part of a vaccum system and here’s how you interpret what they’re saying’ rather than just listing the entities…

We don’t have a good place to self document right now. If you could have a plain text description attached to a device or entity in addition to its aliases and states this would work.

1 Like
4

Many of my entities… Including scripts and automations have a “description” attribute added in yaml via the customize property… I then expose this conditionally in the UI. Used to be able to add custom attributes in the UI but that was removed a few years back.

5

I think a potentially useful implementation would be to allow adding a Markdown notes card to each device info page.

The device info pages have gotten very useful. It would be an ideal place to have a Markdown card that could store battery info, link to documentation, or what ever you wanted.

5 Likes
6

Here’s my WTH from 2022: WTH Can't we add a Notes card to the device config view to write down device information?

1 Like
7

I have many devices around the home, each with their own nuances. I’d like to add some personal notes to my Home Assistant device so I can remember things like, “this Bluetooth beacon is hidden above the kitchen cabinet” or “this light controller is wired with WW to the orange wire and CW to the blue wire”.

A simple notes field so I can capture my own device notes.

1 Like
8

I agree and would be handy to have a notes area.
Example: Wnen I change a battery in a device, I like to note the date. This helps me know how long they last.
As a work around. (silly as this may sound). I create a “Alias” in Voice Assistant under Battery and add the dates there as I don’t have it exposed! :slight_smile:

10

Check out this custom integration: GitHub - andrew-codechimp/HA-Battery-Notes: A Home Assistant integration to provide battery notes of devices

11

Thanks for the suggestion and link, Looks like an interesting integration specifically for batteries if one has a lot of devices. Nice.
In general though it would excellent if there was a Notes field available by default for every Device & Entity added.

2 Likes