Improved User Experience for IESS Integration

[Alfystar]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.
First of all, I want to thank you for your fantastic work. I am a loyal user of your project. I have an IESS system at home and I connect to Metronet through your integration. Currently, with the presets for activating areas, I find myself limited in a few ways.

Describe the solution you'd like
I would love to have the following additional degrees of freedom:

1. The ability to choose icons and labels for the presets.
2. The option to hide unused presets (e.g., "Vacation" in my case).
3. The ability to exclude sensors from Home Assistant, similar to how I can do it from Metronet. The Metronet app is more technical and not easily shareable with my wife, whereas Home Assistant offers a more intuitive interface with sensor mapping.
4. The ability to activate/deactivate alarm areas independently of the presets. This would allow me to further partition my areas, using presets for all sub-areas, but still activate only some if needed.

Describe alternatives you've considered
I have considered continuing to use the Metronet app for these functionalities, but it is less user-friendly for my family members. Home Assistant provides a more intuitive interface and better visualization of sensor locations.

Additional context
Both exclusion and area activation are features supported by the Metronet app, so I believe the IESS APIs should allow for these functionalities. If needed, I am available to assist with programming. You have created an amazing integration!

[palazzem]

Thank you very much @Alfystar for filling this feature request! I'm a bit behind handling latest feature request, but I want to reassure you that in the coming month I'll dedicate time to implement new functionalities thanks to your precious feedback!

I'll reach you out in the coming weeks! Thanks again!

[Alfystar]

Perfect, I'm here to help you!
Thank you

[Alfystar]

I hope I don't seem pushy, after almost 3 months 😜, I just wanted to know if the ideas had entered the todo-list 😊

[palazzem]

Hey @Alfystar! Not at all, you’re definitely not pushy! Pinging me is totally fine!

Unfortunately, I hadn’t planned any time to work on the project over the past few months. However, I’m aiming to pick it back up this weekend. I’ll prepare a roadmap that I can deliver within the next two weeks.

That said, we’re currently dealing with a bug (apparently) related to the latest version of Home Assistant (see #180) so, that patch, will take priority. But I’ll make sure to include your feature request on the roadmap. I'll update you as soon as I execute on the schedule!

Thanks again for helping me in making the project better!

[palazzem]

Hello @Alfystar ! I'm taking a look at your suggestions and I'll try to answer inline!

Request 1

The ability to choose icons and labels for the presets

I think this is related to Home Assistant as that part is not handled by our integration. You may take a look at their documentation (https://www.home-assistant.io/docs/configuration/customizing-devices/) to see how you can customize your experience with Home Assistant. Let me know if I misunderstood what you are trying to achieve!

Request 2

The option to hide unused presets (e.g., "Vacation" in my case)

I think this falls again on Home Assistant. If you open your dashboard in "Edit Mode" and you edit the Alarm Panel widget, you should be able to enable/disable some of these. You can see an example below!

Request 3

The ability to exclude sensors from Home Assistant, similar to how I can do it from Metronet. The Metronet app is more technical and not easily shareable with my wife, whereas Home Assistant offers a more intuitive interface with sensor mapping.

If I got it correctly, you want to disable a sensor so that if it triggers, it doesn't trigger the alarm right? I think this makes 100% sense and if I got it correctly, your request should be the same as the request for this users: #80

Can you double check if what you would like to see, is actually the same as the other user? I want to be sure I'm not missing any little detail!

Request 4

The ability to activate/deactivate alarm areas independently of the presets. This would allow me to further partition my areas, using presets for all sub-areas, but still activate only some if needed.

Unfortunately, the Alarm Panel only allows the presets you see, and having more depends on Home Assistant team as it is not implemented in this integration, but in Home Assistant "core" (ref).

That said, I offer a different way to handle your case as you can perform actions via automations or scripts (https://www.home-assistant.io/docs/scripts/perform-actions/). In that case, you can create a button that triggers a script you previously defined, that enables / disables specific areas. You can play with it by going into "Developer Tools" (you must be admin to see it) and then selecting "Actions" on the top bar:

This is just an example you can use to play with it. If you follow Home Assistant documentation (e.g. https://www.home-assistant.io/dashboards/button/) you may find all you need to customize your experience.

Let me know what you think and if I missed something! If you need more help with Request 4, you can join our Discord channel (mostly with Italian speakers) and ask for help with the configuration there: https://discord.gg/NSmAPWw8tE

[Alfystar]

Hi @palazzem
I apologize for the delay in responding, it was a busy weekend with the holidays and I wanted to have time to absorb and respond to you properly 😄.

Request 1

I think this is related to Home Assistant as that part is not handled by our integration. You may take a look at their documentation (home-assistant.io/docs/configuration/customizing-devices) to see how you can customize your experience with Home Assistant. Let me know if I misunderstood what you are trying to achieve!

I didn't think presets were entities, so now I'm going to look into that, but I can't see them from the UI, maybe they're editable from yaml, I'll try and let you know, thanks!

Request 2

You're right! It is possible to modify the keypad, I have already done so, in fact now I wonder what this "custom bypass" is, which as you can see is deactivated and not selectable

I notice however that this configuration has no effect with this other page, and if I do edit I modify the entity and not this view, is there any way to do something? The icons I was referring to are these, and my hope was to be able to change them, rename, remove and also, potentially, add

Request 3

Yes, with my request I was referring exactly to this feature request: #80 , I see that he has detailed it much better than me.
I'm not sure I understood his speech about security, but I think you know well all the security aspect of this plugin 😄.
My plus suggestion is, once this implementation is done, if it were possible to group some sensors togheder and activate/deactivate them all together when requested, I think it could be a cool feature!
In the case of my house, we have windows that open in a tilt-and-turn manner, and when they are in that state, for obvious reasons the sensor is "alarmed" (because it is partially open) even if the grates outside are closed, to manage this scenario, especially in the summer with the heat, every night I have to exclude them from the main metronet app, but being able to do it in one click, directly from home assistant (obviously entering the user's pin for security reasons), also from the iphone of my wife, will be Amazin!!.

Request 4

Now I start playing with the developer tools and if there are any problems, or even results, I will be happy to share them with you! Thanks for the invite 😸
I just have one doubt though, if I use a button, do I have to hard-code my pin inside or does the system ask me? Because, since this is a security feature, you understand well that I can't do something like that

[palazzem]

Hello again! As I'm out for the next three weeks, I'll try to elaborate some action items so we can keep this thread actionable for when I'm back!

Request 1

I think this one is addressed as anyway depends on Home Assistant and it's not part of our integration. If you think what HA offers is not enough for your use case, you may take a look at their issues and see if somebody else has found a workaround, or if the team is making changes (e.g. a change that will be available in one of the incoming releases): https://github.com/home-assistant/core/issues

Request 2

I notice however that this configuration has no effect with this other page, and if I do edit I modify the entity and not this view, is there any way to do something? The icons I was referring to are these, and my hope was to be able to change them, rename, remove and also, potentially, add

Ah I understand what you mean, but unfortunately it's still on Home Assistant making those changes. This integrations does only three things:

1. Stores your credential to automatically log in when HA starts
2. After any of your alarm sensors change state, it calls e-connect or Metronet to grab a full update of your system
3. Propagates these changes to Home Assistant that offers a backend and a UI to view/manipulate the alarm state

To summarize, this integration simply adds a capability to HA to connect to e-connect/Metronet. All the rest is on HA itself :(

Request 3

Great! I think you can add your suggestion to #80 as it makes sense to group sensors together! Once you add your suggestion, I'll be sure to work on it during the next round of development!

Request 4

If you use a button, you can both register the PIN (so it's not asked, like you would do in automations), or you use HA templates to actually grab the value from the alarm panel. In your case, you have to update your configuration YAML (not sure if you can do it directly from the UI) and include an action for the button that takes the PIN from your Alarm entity panel. Basically:

1. You add a button in your UI
2. You create a script via YAML (or UI if latest HA versions supports templating from the UI) that triggers the service like you would do in the Developer Tools
3. In the above action, you use a template for the code parameter that takes the PIN code from the Alarm Panel entity (I think you must hard code the alarm entity name in the template and never change it)
4. You configure the button to perform the action above

You can see some details and small examples in HA documentation: https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/template/

You can always join the channel and ask for help! I'm not an expert of HA fine-tuning, but maybe somebody else is!

Summary

Just to summarize each request (correct me if I'm wrong):

1. Closed as it depends on HA and not on the integration
2. Closed as it depends on HA and not on the integration
3. Actionable! I'll work on Enable/Disable sensors through switches #80 in the next round of development
4. Me / the community may help you to prepare a configuration that would cover your use case without storing the PIN in your config

[Alfystar]

Hi @palazzem
Fantastic answer! 🤩

Unfortunately I'm in the same situation as you and for now I can't start programming with my hands, but as soon as I get back I'll try and write on the community!

Thank you for your time, support and help 😁

[Alfystar]

Hi @palazzem
Request open:
https://community.home-assistant.io/t/improvements-to-the-security-panel-icons-labels-sensor-exclusion-and-area-activation/886998

and data copied in the #80 issue.

Unfortunately I'm still away from home, so I'd rather not fiddle with the alarm from afar 😂, but thanks for all your support!