Missing binary sensors

[markora]

Home assistant core version: 2022.11.4 Thermiq: 2.0.5 FW: 1.4?

After the latest update all my thermiq binary sensors got replaced by regular sensors. An example:

sensor.thermiq_mqtt_vp1_boiler_6kw_on

This sensor used to be binary_sensor type previously. It seems that the new sensor is working and updating On and Off values correctly.

Is this the way it should be working from now one or is this a bug? Similar issues for someone else?

[ThermIQ]

This is intended, at least for now. The binary sensor has been replace by a normal sensor with 0 and 1 as valid values.

Are there any drawbacks by doing it like this?

Rgds /&&

[markora]

Ok, thanks for the info.

I am surely not an expert not an expert to answer for this. I took the opportunity to ask from discord channel and here is an answer: "(binary sensor) restricts the range of possible values, so don't need to worry about getting random values. binary_sensor also has a bunch of standard translations based on device_class that sensor doesn't have"

Based on this I would say that the latter could be a possible advantage of using binary sensors instead of just sensors.

And the out of scooe values could be a problem but impossible to say without knowing how HW works.

Some more info on developer portal: https://developers.home-assistant.io/docs/core/entity/binary-sensor/

[ThermIQ]

Ok, I'll put it on the backlog but with low priority until base functionality is in place and verified by some more people

[jascdk]

@ThermIQ I would also suggest that all sensors that have a state of 1 or 0 should be a binary sensor. IMO it is the most correct :) The problem is that a sensor with state on or off does not have the capability to reflect its state in HA with a color (so it easy viewable through the dashboard. Binary sensors does that

[jascdk]

Ok, I'll put it on the backlog but with low priority until base functionality is in place and verified by some more people

@ThermIQ any news on this :)

[ThermIQ]

No progress yet but not forgotten

[jascdk]

@ThermIQ any news :)

[ThermIQ]

No, feel free to implement and push a change

[tomrosenback]

Another point that increases the priority is that groups of sensors are not working as they are expecting numerical values not on/off states.

[ThermIQ]

A new beta is available with binary_sensors, @tomrosenback please check it out

[tomrosenback]

You are referring to 2.1.1? It seems to work but looking at the code it seems like the BinarySensor entity is missing the is_on property which makes the states be strings instead of booleans.

[ThermIQ]

Aha,That makes sense, I thought behaviour was odd, will fix later today

[tomrosenback]

Tested 2.1.2 now, works perfect! Thank you!

[ThermIQ]

Great! Summary of how time was spent:

• 1 Year stalling the task
• 4h to get the development environment running again adding some internal docs on How-to
• 2h Updating the development environment to latest HA
• 15min Coding of feature
• 1h Debug -- Release and repeat
• 15min Coding and debug

With my new internal How-to I expect that I can shorten the development time for a feature to an hour or so. Still no idea how to address the 1 Year stalling time :-)

/&&

[jascdk]

Also running version 2.1.2 here without any issues so far:) great work :)