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 or disabling elements
Some entities are disabled by default. To enable them, follow these steps:
-
In Home Assistant, open the table of interest.
- To enable or disable entities, go to Settings > Devices & Services > Entities.
- To enable or disable automations, go to Settings > Automations & Scenes.
-
Enable multiselect and select all the entities you want to enable or disable.
-
In the top right corner, select the three dots menu, then select Enable or Disable.
Related topics
Defining a custom polling interval
Creating an automation for polling gives you more flexibility on when to poll.
Why use an automation instead of changing the integration’s configuration for polling?
- Not all integrations have a configurable polling interval. The homassistant.update_entity service on the other hand works with most of the integrations, no code changes required.
- An automation allows you to poll whenever you want. For example, if you have a rate-limited solar panel provider with a maximum number of requests per day, you may want to lower/stop the polling at night but poll more frequently during the day.
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 automation.
To add the automation:
- Go to Settings > Devices & Services, and select your integration.
- On the integration entry, select the three dots.
- Then, select System options and toggle the button to disable polling.
- 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.
- Save your new automation to poll for data.