Generic Thermostat: Unclear reference to "Keep alive" option, crammed entry field

[NoRi2909]

The problem

When setting up a Generic Thermostat as a Helper there is the Minimum cycle duration setting at the bottom:

The explantion contains this sentence:

"This option will be ignored if the keep alive option is set."

It is unclear what this is referring to as there is no such option in the dialog itself. Probably leftover from older settings, it's not present on the Generic Hygrostat, BTW.

On Desktop the entry field for the time is already crammed and on mobile this is getting unusable:

What version of Home Assistant Core has the issue?

2024.10.3

[home-assistant[bot]]

generic_thermostat documentation generic_thermostat source

[mib1185]

Hi @NoRi2909 maybe the docs can help here? Further, the ui glitch should be reported to the frontend repository, thx :+1:

[NoRi2909]

@mib1185

Hi @NoRi2909 maybe the docs can help here?

Well, the docs explain that you could set that keep_alive option in YAML , but as it's not in the dialog of the Generic Thermostat we do have a bug here.

The keep alive option needs to be added here so the user can set it, or that sentence needs to read: "This option will be ignored if the keep alive option is set using YAML."

Further, the ui glitch should be reported to the frontend repository, thx 👍

Done: https://github.com/home-assistant/frontend/issues/22444

[nistvan86]

Not just the keep_alive option missing, but many other useful settings, eg. min_temp, max_temp values (the defaults are a bit too broad, making the current temperature and setpoint barely move on the half-circle dial of the thermostat). I hope these gets exposed in an update.

[NoRi2909]

Agreed, @nistvan86. It would be best to have a second page for setting all the additional parameters.

For the moment the minimum fix would be to replace the words "keep alive" in that string with keep_alive so it's clearer that this is a YAML-only option. That's a simple change here:

https://github.com/home-assistant/core/blob/87f2a4242ebd70d50c5d31e3464662d83f507378/homeassistant/components/generic_thermostat/strings.json#L21

[nistvan86]

I don't see how you can edit the UI created helper's config in YAML. For helper thermostats I think these values are currently unaccessible.

[NoRi2909]

@nistvan86 OK, the YAML files for these are hidden in File Editor.

For the German UI I now fixed this by using keep_alive in the string to make clear that it does not refer to anything in the dialog. I think this could be the minimum first step in English, too.

But let's hope someone takes notice and adds all options to the UI.