Which entities do we need?

[myny-git]

Hi all

the integration comprises of quite some entities, 14 in total for single connector, around 20 for a dual-connector. I was wondering, do we need all of those?

If your usecase is to make a dashboard in home assistant, you can create a card with this:

• type: button
  name: Pause Charging
  icon: mdi:pause
  tap_action:
  action: call-service
  service: smappee_ev.pause_charging
  data:
  connector_id: 1
  current: 6

[peterdedecker83]

Will there ever be more than 2 connectors? If not, than it's just fine as it is. Easy to use and add to dashboards, you don't have to add them all if you don't want to, but it's fine that you can just do that with only two clicks.

[myny-git]

Ok, so you in fact vote to keep all of them.
Maybe, we should start a topic, to inspire users for a nice home assistant dashboard.

[peterdedecker83]

Indeed, keep them all, and add the ones you want to the dashboard in a way you like them.

For my home battery and solar inverters I have an overwhelming amount of entities, but only some of them are displayed on my main dashboard. Other ones are used in automations however, or only displayed when there is something to be notified about.

For example: on one inverter I have two strings. I measure voltage on both strings, which are two entities and more for current and other stuff. Then I calculate the relative difference and compare them with the relative difference in number of connected panels. As they are all the same, those two ratios should be somewhere in the same order. If the difference between the two ratios is two big, this indicates a damaged or dirty panel. I don't have to see those numbers and calculations on my dashboard, only when there might be a dirty/broken panel.

[dirkpiano]

totally off-topic, but I did the same with my 2 solar strings (using watts for each string, not voltages). And was convinced I had a problem with some panels of string A (20 panels south) that gave me per panel (at their max) about 20-30W less than the 6 east-oriented panels of string B. Now I just found in the inverter's manual there is a max current per string: 20Amps string A, 12Amps string B. Checked in HA, that's what happening: in the middle of the day the panels of string A are limited to 20 amps (the rising curve becomes a flat horizontal line), while the panels of string B are never at their max of 12A. Conclusion: nothing wrong with the panels, just maxing out on the power the inverter can handle on string A. And so this comparison is now a bit pointless. At least I learned something today :-)

[peterdedecker83]

@dirkpiano great, nice to know and thanks for sharing! Interesting to see how the availability of all these parameters/sensors and especially their history helps thorough fault-finding, or in this case, proving that there's actually nothing wrong and no reason to alert installers :-D