I have several devices that can set alarms and provide sensors like sensor.devicename_next_alarm of device_class timestamp. The idea is that any of these can set an alarm which shall trigger a HA script, and I always want to use the “next” (=minimum) alarm from the group of devices to trigger the next run of the script.
So I naively created a “group” using the UI’s “Helper” functionality, entered the “next_alarm” entities, and set type to “Minimum”. I also set “Ignore unavailable” to on. The “group” created by the helper doesn’t create an old-style group.something but instead a sensor.something.
I expected its state to become the minimum timestamp (in ISO format, like the original device sensors) if any alarms on the grouped devices were set, or unavailable if none were set. So I could easily use the “group minimum” as a trigger to start the next alarm script.
Unfortunately, this doesn’t work, and the group sensor always returns unavailable, even if one or more alarms are set on the grouped devices.
Q1: Is handling of device_class timestamp in helper groups not yet implemented? If so, will it be implemented?
Q2: Any easy-to-implement workarounds (possibly using only the UI), in HA Core 2025.4.2 and newer?
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