Dynamic sensor updates on value change

[TheSerapher]

Hey Community,

First off, great work on this project! My Box was sitting around most of the time since I was missing some additional features out of the box like displaying sensor values. This project finally allowed me to do just that!

Question that came up after implementing a simple page for Solar Production and Power Consumption:

How can I refresh the sensor data from Home Assistant only when I am actually looking at the page for the sensors? I re-purposed the template_page as solar_page and added the sensors to the text_sensors block and the details onto that page (see code below). Now everything seems to work just fine but after installing this I also noticed how often the data is updated (once for each sensors value change). Of course I could just limit it to the consumption sensor since it will certainly always update but that felt wrong. Especially since the sensors constantly update in the background.

Q: How can I either throttle the updates on the sensor, disable updates of sensor values unless I am in the page or otherwise reduce the amount of updates?

Any help is appreciated 😄

Page

      - id: solar_page ##### solar page ####
        lambda: |-
          it.fill(id(black));
          it.printf(20, 22, id(my_font5), white, TextAlign::LEFT, "Production:");
          it.printf(315, 75, id(my_font2), white, TextAlign::RIGHT, "%s", id(solar_production).state.c_str());
          it.printf(20, 128, id(my_font5), white, TextAlign::LEFT, "Consumption:");
          it.printf(315, 181, id(my_font2), white, TextAlign::RIGHT, "%s", id(power_consumption).state.c_str());

Sensor

text_sensor:
  - platform: homeassistant
    entity_id: sensor.fems_production_active_power
    name: "Solar Production"
    id: solar_production
    internal: true
    on_value:
      component.update: s3_box_lcd    
  - platform: homeassistant
    entity_id: sensor.fems_consumption_active_power
    name: "Power Consumption"
    id: power_consumption
    internal: true
    on_value:
      component.update: s3_box_lcd  

[BigBobbas]

Hi there, I'm glad to hear that you find the project useful. It should be possible to do the following, but I've not the time at the moment to test it.
I will have a think of ways to do it but in the meantime it may be worth having a look at the the component.suspend and component.resume actions to see if those will accomplish this. info is here https://esphome.io/automations/actions.html#component-suspend-action.

I'm not entirely sure if with a HA text_sensor wether the data is pushed to the device regardless though. If this is the case and the issue is that the screen is constantly updating. You can remove on value and component.update: s3_box_lcd from the sensor config as this basically will re-draw the screen everytime there is a new value from HA. There is an interval that runs every 30s that re-draws the screen so values should then only change every 30s - there are ways that this could be changed too but I would need to look into it a little further.

Let me know how you get on and I will find some time to take a look if you still need help 👍
Best Wishes

Rob

[TheSerapher]

Found something that allowed me to adjust the default refresh interval: https://github.com/BigBobbas/ESP32-S3-Box3-Custom-ESPHome/blob/main/s3b.yaml#L153-L156

Since I am mostly sitting on the solar dashboard I built this is probably sufficient. Removed the on_value calls for the HA text_sensor entities and just keep refreshing.

If there is a better solution - or something cleaner - let me know!

[BigBobbas]

Hi there ,
I will take a look today , how often would you like the values to update ? It may be a better approach to add the sensors as sensors rather than text_sensors this will allow to set an update interval and or also filters and also the ability to use the suspend and resume actions.

If you can describe exactly what it is you would like to happen, I can take a look and see if we can come up with the best configuration for your requirement

[TheSerapher]

Hey @BigBobbas ,

Thanks for your replies! I was indeed looking more into this since the battery of the Box lasts less than 24h when running with HA updates all the time. Not a huge issue since it would sit on my desk but I am sure others will not find this acceptable when placing it in a remote location.

text_sensor seems to be updated via push calls from home assistant, unless I work around this by adding a new template sensor in HA that updates less frequently, I don't think this could be fixed?

Using a sensor might be the better approach and I will give that a shot! Seems I could get rid of all the string transformations then too since they are represented as numbers - d'oh! In any case, I will give it a shot, seems simple enough. Will post back with a working extract.

Quick EDIT: Looks like the only sensor that has an update_interval is template? Maybe it's all based on push from HA to the ESPHome API so we can't control it on the device. Logs certainly look that way - and would explain the battery drain quite easily?

[08:33:59][D][homeassistant.text_sensor:017]: 'sensor.fems_grid_active_power': Got state '2417'
[08:34:00][D][homeassistant.text_sensor:017]: 'sensor.fems_energy_storage_system_dc_discharge_power': Got state '-31'
[08:34:00][D][homeassistant.text_sensor:017]: 'sensor.fems_filtered_consumption_active_power': Got state '2348'
[08:34:00][D][homeassistant.text_sensor:017]: 'sensor.fems_grid_active_power': Got state '2407'
[08:34:01][D][homeassistant.text_sensor:017]: 'sensor.fems_energy_storage_system_dc_discharge_power': Got state '-4'
[08:34:01][D][homeassistant.text_sensor:017]: 'sensor.fems_filtered_consumption_active_power': Got state '2362'
[08:34:01][D][homeassistant.text_sensor:017]: 'sensor.fems_grid_active_power': Got state '2463'
[08:34:02][D][homeassistant.text_sensor:017]: 'sensor.fems_energy_storage_system_dc_discharge_power': Got state '-18'
[08:34:02][D][homeassistant.text_sensor:017]: 'sensor.fems_filtered_consumption_active_power': Got state '2414'
[08:34:02][D][homeassistant.text_sensor:017]: 'sensor.fems_grid_active_power': Got state '2483'
[08:34:03][D][homeassistant.text_sensor:017]: 'sensor.fems_energy_storage_system_dc_discharge_power': Got state '0'
[08:34:03][D][homeassistant.text_sensor:017]: 'sensor.fems_filtered_consumption_active_power': Got state '2440'
[08:34:03][D][homeassistant.text_sensor:017]: 'sensor.fems_grid_active_power': Got state '2486'

EDIT 2: Yes, I removed the on-update and wen't back to an update interval of 15s - lower than before but still better than 2s. Good enough to see some updates happening sometimes but I mostly glance at it anyway.

EDIT 3: Went back to text_sensor after noticing that ESPHome sends back all sensor data to HA to ensure a clean state of the sensor. There were some other workarounds (e.g. using a template sensor) but I figured text_sensor works already and doesn't send states back, why not use that. Have to transform data again, but that could be OK.

[TheSerapher]

Here a picture of the battery usage throughout a couple hours. Strangely it doesn't seem like that screensaver mode really saves much power, either the display is really energy efficient or the device just draws a lot of power all the time anyway.

[BigBobbas]

when running the device use between .25 and .50 of a watt - aprox .5 to 1 amp current draw, it fluctuates constantly. There is an option to reduce power by putting the device to sleep after a configured duration and waking on a button press / screen tap but obviously this would stop all services running until the device wakes.

[TheSerapher]

I agree, that would be the only option. I am quite happy with it as it is since it’s mostly connected to a power source when sitting on my desk but I can still move it around if I wished to 😄

[TheSerapher]

I dropped this approach since there are no benefits in updating on sensor changes. Battery won't last longer and just reducing the overall update interval for the screen works just fine. I will close this questions since I don't think there even is a great answer to it!