core Water Usage reporting with Yolink FlowSmart All-in-One meter is too infrequent to be useful for flow rate analytics

The problem

The Yolink water reporting sensor is too infrequent to be able to calculate a flow rate and does not provide an indication whether water is currently flowing. The Yolink app reports that water is flowing (sometimes requiring a manual refresh), but the integration does not, instead it only reports periodic and random updates to the sensor.yolink_water_meter_water_meter_reading. This means that water flow can start long before the sensor is updated and there's no way to know when the water has stopped flowing through the meter. This greatly diminishes the Yolink water meter's value when integrating with Home Assistant.

Suggestion:

Create a binary_sensor that updates immediately when the meter detects water is running/not running.
When water flow starts, stops or signficantly changes rate, the meter and hub should send an update to Home Assistant. there are concerns with battery life on the meter, it may make sense to make this optional and suggest that users use a DC adaptor on their water meter
Create a sensor that calculates the real-time current flow rate.

What version of Home Assistant Core has the issue?

2024.10.1

What was the last working version of Home Assistant Core?

2024.10.1

What type of installation are you running?

Home Assistant OS

Integration causing the issue

Yolink

Link to integration documentation on our website

https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/yolink/

Diagnostics information

No response

Example YAML snippet

No response

Anything in the logs that might be useful for us?

No response

Additional information

No response

Oct 11 '24 22:10 maggar

Hey there @matrixd2, mind taking a look at this issue as it has been labeled with an integration (yolink) you are listed as a code owner for? Thanks!

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Oct 11 '24 22:10 home-assistant[bot]

Here's an illustration of of the issue. I created a derivitive sensor to show the flow rate, and a template sensor that forces a refresh of the meter reading sensor every 5 minutes (so the derivitive sensor would see an update at lesat once every 5 minutes) As you can see below, this creates rather innacurate estimates of flow rates (gal/min) because it doesn't have accurate start/stop times.

Oct 11 '24 22:10 maggar

@maggar I'm sorry for the late reply, I just confirmed with the firmware developer that this feature is not supported

Nov 04 '24 07:11 matrixd2

@matrixd2 - are you saying that there's no way for the integration to know when the water starts running? I'm not surprised, but my ask is for Yolink to provide a firmware update to provide a way that the integration can know this. It's quite critical to know in a timely manner that the water is running (e.g. if the house is in 'away mode', and the water starts running unexpectedly, an automation can turn off the water valve.). Could you put in a feature request to the firmware developer (see my suggestions above about potentially requiring the meter to be plugged in for this feature to be enabled)? Tx!

Nov 04 '24 18:11 maggar

I have reported this issue to the firmware developers.

Jan 03 '25 04:01 matrixd2

There hasn't been any activity on this issue recently. Due to the high number of incoming GitHub notifications, we have to clean some of the old issues, as many of them have already been resolved with the latest updates. Please make sure to update to the latest Home Assistant version and check if that solves the issue. Let us know if that works for you by adding a comment 👍 This issue has now been marked as stale and will be closed if no further activity occurs. Thank you for your contributions.

Apr 03 '25 05:04 issue-triage-workflows[bot]

Still an issue. @matrixd2 can you please let us know the status? Tx

Apr 03 '25 13:04 markaggar

Is this being worked on? I have the same issue.

Apr 25 '25 10:04 smmarczak

Sorry for the delay reply, Due to hardware limitations(YS5008), the device is unable to obtain water flow status in real time.

May 08 '25 08:05 matrixd2

This is disappointing. Can we at least try to replicate the functionality of the app and provide a refresh button or action? Is there another device planned that would support real time updates? Tx.

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From: Matrix @.> Sent: Thursday, May 8, 2025 1:35:40 AM To: home-assistant/core @.> Cc: markaggar @.>; Manual @.> Subject: Re: [home-assistant/core] Water Usage reporting with Yolink FlowSmart All-in-One meter is too infrequent to be useful for flow rate analytics (Issue #128208)

[https://avatars.githubusercontent.com/u/15178537?s=20&v=4]matrixd2 left a comment (home-assistant/core#128208)https://github.com/home-assistant/core/issues/128208#issuecomment-2862226795

Sorry for the delay reply, Due to hardware limitations(YS5008), the device is unable to obtain water flow status in real time.

— Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHubhttps://github.com/home-assistant/core/issues/128208#issuecomment-2862226795, or unsubscribehttps://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AGA53PY4ZXURVOJ3MQSEKXD25MJNZAVCNFSM6AAAAABPZYJ4NKVHI2DSMVQWIX3LMV43OSLTON2WKQ3PNVWWK3TUHMZDQNRSGIZDMNZZGU. You are receiving this because you are subscribed to this thread.Message ID: @.***>

May 08 '25 16:05 markaggar

There hasn't been any activity on this issue recently. Due to the high number of incoming GitHub notifications, we have to clean some of the old issues, as many of them have already been resolved with the latest updates. Please make sure to update to the latest Home Assistant version and check if that solves the issue. Let us know if that works for you by adding a comment 👍 This issue has now been marked as stale and will be closed if no further activity occurs. Thank you for your contributions.

Aug 06 '25 17:08 issue-triage-workflows[bot]

Oh well, I thought as much. I bought a Droplet from Hydrific Waterd to measure real time water flow instead (for other folks reading).

From: issue-triage-workflows[bot] @.> Sent: Wednesday, August 13, 2025 11:10 AM To: home-assistant/core @.> Cc: Mark Aggar @.>; Manual @.> Subject: Re: [home-assistant/core] Water Usage reporting with Yolink FlowSmart All-in-One meter is too infrequent to be useful for flow rate analytics (Issue #128208)

Closed #128208https://github.com/home-assistant/core/issues/128208 as not planned.

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Aug 13 '25 21:08 markaggar