Adding Devices to Home Assistant
Home Assistant will be able to automatically discover and configure any Google Chromecasts, Netgear routers, Belkin WeMo switches, Philips Hue bridges and Sonos speakers on your network if you have the discovery component enabled (which is by default).
See the components overview page to find installation instructions for your devices and services. If you can’t find support for your favorite device or service, consider adding support.
Usually every entity needs its own entry in the configuration.yaml file. There are two styles for multiple entries:
Style 1: Collect every entity under the “parent”
sensor: - platform: mqtt state_topic: "home/bedroom/temperature" name: "MQTT Sensor 1" - platform: mqtt state_topic: "home/kitchen/temperature" name: "MQTT Sensor 2" - platform: rest resource: http://IP_ADDRESS/ENDPOINT switch: - platform: vera
Style 2: List each device separately
You need to append numbers or strings to differentiate the entries, as in the example below. The appended number or string must be unique.
media_player livingroom: platform: mpd server: IP_ADDRESS media_player kitchen: platform: plex camera 1: platform: generic camera 2: platform: mjpeg
If your devices are not showing up in the frontend then check the entries in your configuration.yaml file for duplicates.
Grouping devices
Once you have a bunch of devices set up, it is time to organize them into groups.
Each group exists of a name and a list of entity IDs. Entity IDs can be retrieved from the web interface by using the Set State page in the Developer Tools (second icon).
# Example configuration.yaml entry showing two styles group: living_room: light.table_lamp, switch.ac bedroom: - light.bedroom - media_player.nexus_player
For more details please check the Group page.
Customizing devices and services
By default, all of your devices will be visible and have a default icon determined by their domain. You can customize the look and feel of your front page by altering some of these parameters. This can be done by adding the following configuration inside the homeassistant: section.
Devices that you dont want to have visible can be hidden with hidden.
entity_pictureentries, badges, device_tracker pictures, etc. can either be external URLs (e.g. http://example.com/example.jpg) or of the form /local/filename.jpg, where /local represents the directory www in the HASS configuration directory. You may have to create the www directory yourself as it is not made automatically.
You can also use icon and refer to any icon from MaterialDesignIcons.com.
# Example configuration.yaml entry homeassistant: # Add this to your existing configuration # Only the `entity_id` is required. All other options are optional. customize: sensor.living_room_motion: hidden: true thermostat.family_roomfamily_room: entity_picture: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/12345/images/nest.jpg friendly_name: Nest switch.wemo_switch_1: friendly_name: Toaster entity_picture: /local/toaster.jpg switch.wemo_switch_2: friendly_name: Kitchen kettle icon: mdi:kettle