From 73290897832d9b3d4557f1a0cdeeaa53193d08a6 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Mark Date: Mon, 22 Mar 2021 06:04:36 -0700 Subject: [PATCH] Updated sensor documentation to be more approachable to new users. (#17041) Co-authored-by: Franck Nijhof --- source/_integrations/sensor.markdown | 6 +++--- 1 file changed, 3 insertions(+), 3 deletions(-) diff --git a/source/_integrations/sensor.markdown b/source/_integrations/sensor.markdown index 46cf2ec4191..9ac9af90cd3 100644 --- a/source/_integrations/sensor.markdown +++ b/source/_integrations/sensor.markdown @@ -9,13 +9,13 @@ ha_domain: sensor ha_iot_class: --- -Sensors are gathering information about states and conditions. +Sensors are a basic platform component in Home Assistant. They monitor the states and conditions of a variety of entities. An entity can be many things. This can include a physical device like a motion sensor that reports the battery level, a web service that retrieves the weather temperature, a built-in function that calculates the sun's elevation relative to your GPS position, or even a custom sensor you may have created to report the free space on your laptop. These are all *things* reporting different types of information. -Home Assistant currently supports a wide range of sensors. They are able to display information which are provides by Home Assistant directly, are gathered from web services, and, of course, physical devices. +Some of these sensors are built-in to Home Assistant, some are created automatically when you add an integration (see this [list](/integrations/#sensor)), and some can be created manually. The [Statistics](/integrations/statistics) and [Template](/integrations/template) sensors are two examples of the last case. ## Device Class -The way these sensors are displayed in the frontend can be modified in the [customize section](/docs/configuration/customizing-devices/). The following device classes are supported for sensors: +The type of data a sensor returns impacts how it is displayed in the frontend. This is controlled by the sensor's device class designation. Built-in sensors and many created from an integration will have this designation predefined. Those can be modified in the [customize section](/docs/configuration/customizing-devices/). When manually creating a new sensor the device class may be optionally assigned. A full list of available sensor device classes is below: - **None**: Generic sensor. This is the default and doesn't need to be set. - **battery**: Percentage of battery that is left.