WTH Integrations starting being depended on other device states

Month of "What the heck?!"
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I realise this is probably exceptionally niche and not sure it would even be technically possible. But I have a few integrations (actually all printers using IPP) that are generally turned off fully. As such the integration is ‘failed setup, will retry’ most of the time. In my case they are actually behind a smart switch. It would be nice if somehow you could have integrations a bit like the visibility of cards that would only try to load based on the state of another device. In my case if a switch is turned on.

This is probably very specific and in my case was triggered by a printer that despite being ‘smart’ had a tendency to just stop working when idle to long. But I can imagine there being other optional integrations that would only need to be loaded based on other settings. Perhaps Christmaslights that would only need to be loaded if the situation ‘christmas’ or the month is ‘december’ and else would be in a box.

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The custom integration Spook will alllow you to write auto ations to enable or disable integrations:

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I have the same problem, since I turn a lot of devices off over night and when I’m away to save energy (electricity is expensive in Germany).
There’s also a similar WTH: WTH: Avoid error messages from integration when device is off

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That can save you a lot of energy. But do check the standby power use of the device you are turning off, compared to the 0.5-1.5 Watts, 24/7 that smart plugs tend to use themselves. If the device you are turning off has less than 5W standby use, there’s often no point in turning it off for 8 hours a day or less.

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Oh that looks interesting. I am going to check that out. Perhaps its also something that could become native integrated if it does that. :smiley:

Edit: Oh I see its a project started by Frenck. That emediatly means I have more trust in it!

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Yeah, especially since we seem to have only actors (plugs/sockets like from IKEA or Nous etc etc) that have exactly one socket. So you have the power usage of the “smart” socket for just one user.

I have not seen in the customer market multi-plugs, with 3 or 5 sockets, which can be switched. Then you would have the standby power once, but can drive 3 or 5 devices on/off with it.

Such devices exist, e.g. for 19" server racks, but then they cost a fortune.

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Yes, that’s exactly what I did - I also measured the power consumption of the smart switches when they are on and off to calculate if it makes sense.

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Got this to work even in NodeRed with a bit of experimenting with relative ease. Nice! As Spook is not native it would still be nice if things like

homeassistant.disable_config_entry

and

homeassistant.disable_config_entry

would become native

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After using Spook for a little while now I can say it does indeed solve most of my WTH and also has other nice features. My HA has never been as clean as it is now using its very extended repair notifications.

That said, Spook remains an HACS integration with a clear documentation that its use at own risk. It looks very dependable. But having some of these features ported over to HA core with official support and all would be great.

But again, loving Spooks so far!