Use state.last_reported to prevent unnecessary safety mode

[madd0]

It's probably because my sensors are pretty lazy, and/or because the temperature in my house is pretty stable, but my thermostats keep going into safety mode.

I went through the code rather quickly and noticed that the component uses last_changed and last_updated to determine if the sensor is still providing a temperature reading. I took a look at the docs of the state object and understood the following:

• last_changed changes only if the state changes, i.e. if the temperature changes, in this case
• last_updated changes if the state or any attributes change, which in the case of my temperature sensors is the same as last_changed as they don't really have any other attributes that change

The most interesting thing I noticed while reading the docs, though, is that there is now a last_reported timestamp on the state object, which changes when an integration sets the state of an entity, regardless of any change to the state or a state attribute. This was added around March of this year apparently.

I checked some of my sensors, and indeed, last_reported is significantly different from the other values. For example:

I didn't go into the code in enough detail to determine what changes are needed, but what do you think about using last_reported as the value used to determine temperature "freshness"? Maybe with last_changed as a fallback if last_reported is not available (old HA version)?

[jmcollin78]

Hello, yes I remember I have tried this (there should be some piece of code around this) but this was not working on my environment. Maybe it depends on the brand/model or techno (Zigbee / mqtt / wifi / ...).

I have implemented the same thing with a last_seen info if you have it. You can provide an entity that gives the last_seen datetime value. You can also map the last_seen to the reported value if it works on your home.

[madd0]

Ah, yes, that makes sense.

I've only recently become familiar with template sensors, which I've been using more and more for exactly this kind of scenario.

That's why I started a discussion rather than an outright feature request :)