Customizing the icon of an entity

Welcome to another exciting tutorial of my?Tips & Tricks?newsletter on?Home Assistant!

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In the last episode I introduced the Zigbee world and how to create a Zigbee network in Home Assistant.

To test the Zigbee network I also bought the Aqara Door & Window?and the Aqara Temperature & Humidity?Zigbee sensors.

The Aqara Door & Window sensor is identified as lumi.sensor_magnet.aq2 and it introduces the entity: binary_sensor.lumi_lumi_sensor_magnet_aq2_opening to be used to get the status (open / closed) of the element on which the sensor is installed on.

By default this entity is shown as Opening so that the assigned icon is the one reported below:

Continuing reading you'll get how to change the icon of the entity sensor accordingly.

Hardware configuration

• ConBee II Zigbee USB gateway instaled

Software configuration

• Home Assistant. I'm currently running version?2023.4.3
• Zigbee home automation integration?configured in?Home Assistant

Procedure

There are some different ways to customize the icon of the entity sensor.

1. The first one allows you to change it through the Home Assistant GUI:

Go to Settings->Devices & Services and open the devices reported by the Zigbee integration:

Now select the device for which you want to change the icon:

and select the entity binary_sensor.lumi_lumi_sensor_magnet_aq2_opening:

Change the Show as field from Opening to Window:

The icon will be set to the mdi:window-open / mdi:window-closed according to the state of the entity (ON / OFF).

This is a simple way to change the icon but it doesn't allow you to have full control on the entity's icon.

2. The second way is a more powerful procedure and needs to get back to the yaml code to create the following template sensor:

- binary_sensor:
? ?- name: Bedroom window
? ? ?unique_id: bedroom_window
? ? ?device_class: window
? ? ?state: >
? ? ? ? {% if is_state("binary_sensor.lumi_lumi_sensor_magnet_aq2_opening", "off") %}
? ? ? ? ? off
? ? ? ? {% elif is_state("binary_sensor.lumi_lumi_sensor_magnet_aq2_opening", "on") %}
? ? ? ? ? on
? ? ? ? {% endif %}
? ? ?icon: >
? ? ? ? {% if is_state("binary_sensor.lumi_lumi_sensor_magnet_aq2_opening", "off") %}
? ? ? ? ? mdi:window-closed-variant
? ? ? ? {% elif is_state("binary_sensor.lumi_lumi_sensor_magnet_aq2_opening", "on") %}
? ? ? ? ? mdi:window-open-variant
? ? ? ? {% endif %}        

As you can see the icon section allows you to get the right icon you really want according to the entity's state.

In this specific case the entity to be reported on the Home Assistant GUI will be the: binary_sensor.bedroom_window.

Below the final result you get using the procedures described above:

I do hope that the tips and tricks provided by this new tutorial have been helpful in getting you started with home automation or improve your general skills.

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