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Device Sentinel watches your hardware. It detects frozen devices (silent but showing a healthy value), unavailable devices, and low batteries, by learning each device's own reporting rhythm and setting per-device freeze windows automatically.
Everything runs on sensible defaults from the moment it is installed. There is one thing to configure: for alerts to reach your phone, Device Sentinel must be told where to send them, on the Notifications and Daily Brief screen.
Open Settings, then Devices and Services, then Device Sentinel, then Configure.
- Notifications and Daily Brief: where alerts go, quiet hours, and when the daily brief is sent.
- Global Exclusions: hardware you never want judged or reported, by anything.
- Low Battery: the low threshold, and battery-only excludes.
- Signal Strength: how weakening radio links are judged against each device's own floor, and how long each device dwells at or below it. Recording, reporting, and a sensitivity-and-exclude screen now; alerting is still to come.
- Freeze Detection: how long a device may go quiet before it is called frozen, unavailable, or unknown. Set by two grace sliders.
- Advanced: settings most people never need to change.
- Recovery: experimental. Attempts to revive frozen or offline devices.
- How Device Sentinel Learns: the rhythm, the windows, and why there is no fixed timeout anywhere.
- The Device Page: what every sensor and button means.
- The Daily Brief: the report written for a person, every day, in plain language.
- The Reports: the three diagnostic files behind it.
- The Problem List: how a detection reaches the list, and what the checkbox does.
- FAQ and Troubleshooting
Open an issue at the issue tracker and attach your diagnostics: Settings, Devices and Services, Device Sentinel, then the three-dot menu, then Download Diagnostics. The diagnostics carry the learned state and settings in effect and answer most questions without a screenshot. Notification targets are redacted automatically.
Device Sentinel is brought to you by James Lander at The Thinking Home. Read the story behind it: Reliable Home Assistant Dead Sensor Detection.
Repository · Report an Issue · Releases · Blueprints
Licensed under GPL-3.0-or-later. Copyright © 2026 James Lander.
Start Here
Configuration
- The Device Page
- Notifications and Daily Brief
- Exclusions and Muting
- Low Battery
- Signal Strength
- Freeze Detection
- Advanced
The Reports
Automations
Understanding
- How Device Sentinel Learns
- Maintenance Mode
- The Bridge and Broker Sensors
- What Is Recorded About Your House
- Built to Be Efficient
Coordinator Stacks
Help