Home Assistant

Common tasks - installation independent

This section provides tasks that do not depend on a specific Home Assistant installation type or a specific integration. They may be referenced in other procedures.

Enabling entities

Some entities are disabled by default. To enable them, follow these steps:

  1. Go to Settings > Devices & Services and select the integration of interest.
  2. Select entities.
  3. From the list of entities, select the entity you want to enable. Select entity from list
  4. In the pop-up, select the cogwheel.
  5. Toggle the Enabled button. Enable entities
  6. To save the changes, select Update.

Defining a custom polling interval

If you want to define a specific interval at which your device is being polled for data, you can disable the default polling interval and create your own polling service.

  1. Go to Settings > Devices & Services, and select your integration.

  2. On the integration entry, select the three dots.

    • Then, select System options and toggle the button to disable polling. Disable polling for updates

  3. To define your custom polling interval, create an automation.

    • Go to Settings > Automations & Scenes and create a new automation.

    • Define any trigger and condition you like.

    • Under action, select Call service and use the homeassistant.update_entity service. Update entity

    • Example in YAML.

      automation:
   - alias: "Only update weather information every 20 minutes when I'm home"
      trigger:
         - platform: time_pattern
           minutes: "/20"
      condition:
         - condition: state
           entity_id: device_tracker.cynthia
           state: home
      action:
         - service: homeassistant.update_entity
           target:
             entity_id: weather.home

  4. Save your new automation to poll for data.