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Changes to device tracker entity models

· 3 min read
Erik Montnemery

Summary​

There have been multiple recent changes to the device tracker entity model:

  • The battery_level property has been deprecated
  • The location_name property of TrackerEntity has been deprecated
  • A new entity base class BaseScannerEntity has been introduced
  • Users can associate scanners with other zones than the home zone
  • TrackerEntity has a new property in_zones
  • BaseScannerEntity and ScannerEntity have a new state attribute in_zones
  • A new capability attribute tracking_type has been introduced
  • Zones are now calculated by size, then distance to center when calculating the state of TrackerEntity

Details​

Deprecation of battery_level​

The battery_level property has been deprecated in all device tracker base classes, and will stop working in Home Assistant Core 2027.7. Integrations should communicate battery level via a battery sensor instead.

More details can be found in architecture proposal #627

Deprecation of location_name​

The location_name property of TrackerEntity has been deprecated, and will stop working in Home Assistant Core 2027.7.

Integrations with device trackers which do not know or do not want to report the exact coordinates and today use location_name to report the name of a zone should instead report a list of zone entity IDs through the in_zones property. Device trackers which use location_name to give extra context can instead do that via a separate sensor or an extra state attribute.

More details can be found in architecture proposal #1387

Introduction of the BaseScannerEntity base class​

The BaseScannerEntity class should be used by integrations which have scanners which do not track connection to a WLAN or other local network, for example scanners which track connection to a BLE beacon.

Users can associate BaseScannerEntity and ScannerEntity with any zone​

BaseScannerEntity and ScannerEntity store the associated zone as an entity registry option. The base class will set the state of the entity to the name of the associated zone when connected, and the in_zones state attribute to all zones which contain the associated zone.

More details can be found in architecture proposal #1389

Introduction of the in_zones state attribute​

A new state attribute in_zones is present in the state of device tracker entities. The state attribute is automatically calculated by BaseScannerEntity and ScannerEntity. TrackerEntity will derive the in_zones state attribute from the in_zones property if not None, if it is None it will be calculated from the reported location.

The in_zones state attribute is a list of zone entity IDs sorted by size, with the smallest zone first, then by distance to center.

Introduction of the tracking_type capability attribute​

A new capability attribute tracking_type is present in the state of device tracker entities. The state attribute is set to connection by BaseScannerEntity and ScannerEntity and to location by TrackerEntity. Integrations should not override this behavior.