Sensor categorization

[paravoid]

Creating this as a new issue, per @Sammy1Am in https://github.com/muart-group/esphome/issues/34#issuecomment-2171041034_:

• [x] Shouldn't Compressor Frequency and Error Code be marked as Diagnostic?
  • Diagnostic is currently being reserved for non-sensor, non-climate stuff (like RSSI, Uptime, Loop Duration, etc.). I understand the argument that some of these are uncommonly used, but arguably all of the sensors are less commonly used than the values built into the Controls area, so I'm not sure there'd be any sensors left in Sensors, and there'd be nowhere to put the aforementioned diagnostic stuff.

I should start by saying a) I'm far from an expert on this topic b) HA's entity categorization has always been a little confusing to me!

I understand the argument that diagnostic is for non-sensor non-climate stuff. In other words, diagnostic values for the CN105<->WiFi bridge, not diagnostics values of the heat pump device itself. That makes sense to me as one interpretation.

On the other hand, I'll note that the haier climate component in upstream ESPHome categorizes "compressor frequency" as diagnostic, among many other sensors. See https://github.com/esphome/esphome/blob/d49f2cbec80355694f046088ac0c35ef6483f77a/esphome/components/haier/sensor/__init__.py#L65

Perhaps this is something to discuss with the wider ESPHome project?

[Sammy1Am]

It's more a question for Home Assistant than ESPHome (since the categories are HA defined). The HA documentation on the topic isn't particuarly helpful other than Diagnostic shouldn't be something that can be changed by the user, and it could include RSSI or MAC address.

You mentioned elsewhere that

diagnostic entities do not automatically show up in dashboards, are not exposed to Assist, and show up in a different section in the device page.

and I think that's probably a really important distinction. I'm not sure I understand the dashboards bit (nothing seems to automatically show up for me, I just have to add things myself, but I might have a setting somewhere different), but not being exposed to Assist could be important.

On the one hand, since everything is disabled by default, I think there's some assumption that if someone explicitly enables e.g. Compressor Frequency, that they care enough about it they might not mind seeing it on a dashboard. Would they need to ask their assistant about it? Doubtful 😝, but it also probably doesn't hurt too much to have it exposed?

Might be reasonable to ask for guidance from the HA folks.