Roadmap¶

Occupancy¶

Absence-Only Devices¶

Some devices say something about whether a person is away, but not whether they're home. The usual example is a tablet that is often left behind:

• Tablet away: a good sign its owner is away too.
• Tablet home: says nothing, since it's often left at home.

These devices can't be attached to the person entity as device trackers, since the person would then show as home whenever the tablet is. So AutoArm needs its own link from each device to its owner.

Mobile app devices get attached to a person automatically. When the Companion App registers, mobile_app creates a device_tracker and adds it to the person linked to the registering user. So the owner would already have removed a left-behind tablet's tracker from their person by hand.

Linking a Device to its Owner¶

The config flow UI has no standard way to pair two entities, so these are the choices:

A. Mobile App Registration

• To go from a device tracker to its owner:
  1. Find the tracker's mobile_app config entry, using the entity or device registry.
  2. Read the user_id from that entry's data. It records the Home Assistant user who registered the app.
  3. Find the person whose user_id attribute matches.
• The Occupancy Tuning section only needs a DeviceSelector or EntitySelector filtered to the mobile_app integration, with the owner worked out as above. No pairing is needed in the UI.
• Limits:
  • The device must run the Companion App with location tracking. Router, Bluetooth or other trackers have no user link.
  • The owner is whoever registered the app. That's wrong for a child's tablet set up on a parent's account, or a shared family tablet.
  • The person must be linked to a Home Assistant user.

B. Config Subentries

• The Home Assistant pattern for things under an entry that users add, edit and remove, each with its own form. Each subentry would be a person, plus any absence-only trackers.
• The people chosen now in the options would move into these subentries, with a migration.
• Most work to build, but the clearest to use, and it leaves room for more per-person settings later, such as the occupancy delay times now only in YAML.

C. Object Selector

• An ObjectSelector with fields for a person and trackers, and multiple, gives a list of rows in one form.
• Less work than subentries, but needs checking in the options flow: how it looks, and how entity pickers work inside it on the minimum supported Home Assistant version.

D. Multi-Step Options

• Works on any version, but gives no overview of the pairings, and it's clumsy to edit. Not recommended.

E. YAML

• Matches how buttons, transitions and delay times are set up now. Simplest to build, but goes against the move to the UI.

A and E can be combined. A covers the common case with no pairing, and E handles trackers outside the Companion App, or a device registered on the wrong account.

Behaviour to Decide¶

• The rule. A person counts as away when any of their absence-only devices is away, even if the person entity shows home. A device at home changes nothing.
• Stale devices. If a tablet's battery runs flat while it's away, it keeps its last location, and its owner would stay away for good. Options:
  • Ignore a device not updated within a set time.
  • Only react to a device leaving, not to it being away.
• Owners with no person entity. For example, a tablet whose owner isn't one of the chosen people. Ignore it with a warning, or reject it in the config flow.
• Other features.
  • at_home, not_home, is_occupied and is_unoccupied would all apply the rule, so transitions and the calendar occupancy override get it for free.
  • The trackers need listening to, alongside the person entities in initialize_occupancy.
  • Occupancy delay times: whether they apply to device changes, as they do to person changes.
  • The Assist "why" answer should say when a device made someone count as away.
• Diagnostics. Include the resolved device to owner links, so a wrong mobile app owner is easy to spot.

Recommendation¶

Start with A, adding a picker of Companion App devices to a collapsed Occupancy Tuning section. Add E as the way out for other trackers or wrong owners. Move to B if the pairing needs a UI, or more per-person settings turn up.