Home Assistant Attributes Card
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So you have that new Integration in Home Assistant, but once it’s installed, you see that it just gives you one entity, with a bunch of attributes. First things first: don’t blame Lovelace – it’s not Ada‘s fault.

This can be fixed by turning the attributes that we want into sensors themselves and should take about 10 minutes. So sit back, relax, take a deep breath, and off we go.
Oh, by the way – you do have HACS installed, right? If not then simply head over to the HACS site for installation instructions (erm… but make sure you come back yeah?)
Install the Attributes Integration

Once you are in HACS, Click on “Integrations” and click in the search box, and either search for “attributes” or just look for it – it’s called… well… “Attributes”
Then go into the integration and click “Install”
Restart Home Assistant
You should now restart Home Assistant so that the new integration can be registered. But wait, if you have advanced mode enabled I recommend always checking your configuration (advanced mode can be enabled from within your profile page).

Checking your config isn’t as much of an issue now that Home Assistant has added a “Safe Mode”. It’s still a sensible precaution, though, as prevention is always better than the cure.
Assuming your config is healthy, restart Home Assistant. Once it’s restarted, you can create a new entry in your configuration.
Create new sensor
For my new sensor entry I’ll need the:
- name of the attribute (attribute)
- entity_id (entity_id)
- unit of measurement (unit_of_measurement)
name you to want to give to your attribute (friendly_name)
I’ll explain why that last one is crossed out shortly.
Using the placeholders above, I can configure the configuration like so:
sensor:
- platform: attributes
friendly_name: {friendly_name}
attribute: {attribute}
unit_of_measurement: {unit_of_measurement}
entities:
- {entity_id}
This could give me something like the following if I were to use my climate.living_room example from the image from above
sensor:
- platform: attributes
friendly_name: living_room_humidity
attribute: current_humidity
unit_of_measurement: %
entities:
- climate.living_room
Whatever version you have from whatever entity you are using, save the file, check your config and assuming all is well – restart.
Go find your sensor
When Ada [Lovelace] loads up again, head over to the “Developer Tools” panel and make sure you are in the “States” tab.
Then, while you are in the filter box, type “sensor” and find your new entity, it will be in the form of.
- the new sensor domain ie
sensor - the dot separator ie
. - old entity_id without the domain eg climate.living_room =
living_room - an underscore ie
_ - the name of the attribute eg
current_humidity
So, in this case, it would be
sensor.living_room_current_humidity
A single issue to workaround
Now one thing I can’t get to work is the friendly_name. I even tried giving it a very unique friendly name so that I’d find it easier, but alas, that didn’t work. I can keep you up to speed on this though, as there is a bug filed for this and I’ll keep up to date with the situation and update this post when it’s fixed.
So if we stick with my climate example and the “current_humidity” attribute I put into the config, the new entity_id will be sensor.living_room_current_humidity

The only thing that’s left to do it to keep an eye out for the update when it comes. If you’re not used to HACS, the updatable integrations/plugins etc are listed separately at the top of the page (like this)

When the update happens, you can either click on the “changelog” option and read the docs or if you leave the update and check back here, I’ll update the post to reflect the updates.
There you have it, Folks, now you can make it into a graph using the standard Lovelace Graph card, or some other widget.
You’re welcome,
John
Credits
Mathew SchwartzFeatured image by Mathew Schwartz on Unsplash
I did not know about this John and believe this should be natively part of HA! Thanks for the tip. Sadly when visiting Github this morning, I noticed the developer is not responding to bugs or pull requests so I’m reluctant to rely on a HA add-on that is not being maintained. If I add a whole bunch of sensors using – attributes and the HA updates and it breaks, looks like there is little hope of a timely fix?
This is a fantastic point and one that shows a gaping hole in my blogging skills. It is my duty as the person writing the article to make sure that if I’m recommending a plugin/addon etc, that I’ve done my best to make sure that it’s not only suitable but is also safe. It’s the same reason I never recommend a product for what I can get out of it. If the top product in a post happens to be from a manufacturer that doesn’t have any affiliate marketing available, then so be it.
With that in mind, I have a few options (just thinking through my fingertips here). Either way, I will need to do more research on the addons etc that I use. I could then warn people of this, or I could find alternatives. I think that I’d probably do both of those, to be honest.
Thank you for your critique and for bringing this deficiency in my blogging style to my attention. That probably wasn’t your intention, but either way, I’m genuinely glad you did as it will allow me to provide a better service 🙂 🙂
Thanks again
John
Hey John. Certainly wasn’t my intention to knock your blogging style as that is faultless. Just something I do now as a matter of course as I’ve become so heavily reliant on HA since I first started using it over 4 years ago.
When I wrote about whether you meant to criticise or not, I didn’t mean that in a negative context. As I said, I’m glad you drew attention to the problem with the lack of interaction from the creator. I realise that I need to be more thorough and at least transparent as to the reliability of these addons.
I think there was a comment on here or on the YouTube channel the other week where I thought the person commenting was wrong, and I said so (in a constructive way), so I am not afraid to stick to my position if I think I am correct. It’s just that in this case, I have been missing something in my checklist I will be writing this week as a sort of template for creating posts, that will hopefully negate me having to repeat the same steps for every post.
Thanks again
John