Example of adding air quality (purifier) data to Homey as compound device
I would like to show the way to define a compound device for airpurifier or air quality details in general.
Home Assistant has another way of device definition than Homey.
The elements, HA is working with, are the entities (switch, sensor, fan…). Each entity is the base component for the Homey device you can add directly.
For example, a climate device is defined in HA as entity with a defined set of attributes, modes and services. This entity is imported as device to Homey to offer a seamless control as it would be a Homey internal device.
The HA “devices” are just a set of (independent) entities. If you don’t use special Lovelace dashboard controls, you need to add each sensor or switch as entity to your Lovelace dashboard. There you can see that they are not directly dependent to the climate/fan device.
That’s my example of a Dyson fan/heater/purifier:
You can see the climate an fan entity that can be added as Homey device.
All other entities for air quality data are differnent sensors or switches. And there will be a lot of different versions for all the purifiers of different brands.
So there is no good possibility to add these sensors into a climate/fan device.
You can add every sensor as single device to Homey and place all devices into a “room”. That would be analogous to the Lovelace dashboard adding each entity as Lovelace element.
The better way is to combine these air quality data into a compound device.
- Search all the sensors and switched by the device name in the HA entity list
- If you need to know the data type (numeric/char), you can list the entities in the developer view.
- Create a compound definition, use the best fitting Homey measure type (or the generic measure_numeric for numberns or measure_generic for text)
All possible meassure capabilities can be found in the repository description (link below). - If you are using a capability more than once in the capabilities list, make sure you add a subcapability id using the format “capability.subcapability”.
dyson_air:
name: Dyson Air quality
capabilities:
onoff.continuous: switch.pure_hot_cool_continuous_monitoring
onoff.night: switch.pure_hot_cool_night_mode
measure_humidity: sensor.pure_hot_cool_humidity
measure_temperature: sensor.pure_hot_cool_temperature
measure_numeric.no2: sensor.pure_hot_cool_nitrogen_dioxide
measure_numeric.pm25: sensor.pure_hot_cool_pm_2_5
measure_numeric.pm10: sensor.pure_hot_cool_pm_10
measure_numeric.organic: sensor.pure_hot_cool_volatile_organic_compounds
measure_numeric.filtercarb: sensor.pure_hot_cool_carbon_filter_life
measure_numeric.filterhepa: sensor.pure_hot_cool_hepa_filter_life
capabilitiesTitles:
onoff.continuous: Continuous Monitoring
onoff.night: Night Mode
measure_humidity: Humidity
measure_temperature: Temperature
measure_numeric.no2: NO2
measure_numeric.pm25: PM 2.5
measure_numeric.pm10: PM 10
measure_numeric.organic: Organics
measure_numeric.filtercarb: Filter Carbon
measure_numeric.filterhepa: Filter Hepa
Added to Homey it looks this way:
The first uses switch is used as quick action for the tile.
The sensors are shown in device details:
If your HA entity does not provide a unit, you can set it in the YAML definition:
capabilitiesUnits:
measure_numeric.no2: my unit
Don’t know how to install the custom component to HA?
Here is a description:
And here you can find the component:
You can install it as file of if you are using HACS, you can just add this repository as custom component.
A direct HACS import is in work…
