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Device Sentinel watches your hardware. It detects frozen devices (silent but showing a healthy value) and unavailable devices by learning each device's own reporting rhythm and setting per-device freeze windows automatically. Device Sentinel also detects low batteries (below a set threshold), battery levels that are falling quickly toward zero, and each device's own signal strength, which enables you to detect signal anomalies when they occur. Every detection becomes an entry on a problem list you act on, and a daily brief you can use to keep your system operating at its best.
There are two things to configure after the integration is installed: for alerts to reach your phone, Device Sentinel must be told where to send them, on the Notifications and Daily Brief screen, and to only be notified of devices you care about, you can mute whole integrations and individual devices in the Global Exclusions tab.
- Installation and Setup: what you need, the five minutes it takes, and the settings worth getting right at the time of setup.
- The Device Page: The main device page where you can see the sensors and controls created by the integration.
- Notifications and Daily Brief: This is where to configure where alerts go, quiet hours, and when the daily brief is sent.
- Global Exclusions: Mute hardware you do not want judged or reported. Devices can be muted by whole integrations or individually.
- Low Battery: Set the low battery threshold, how far ahead a falling cell is flagged, and battery-only muting.
- Signal Strength: Configure how weakening radio links are learned and reported.
- Freeze Detection: Customize how long a device may go quiet before it is called frozen, unavailable, or unknown.
- Advanced: The settings on this page are used to fit Device Sentinel to your server capabilities. Home Assistant running on a Raspberry Pi 4 vs a mini-PC are vastly different and these settings allow you to limit how often data is written and how much data to record.
- The Problem List: Where Device Sentinel's detections become something you act on in the form of a Home Assistant to-do list.
- The Daily Brief: This brief answers two questions: what is wrong now, and what happened since yesterday.
- The Battery Report: A report that tells you which devices have low batteries or batteries that are falling quickly.
- The Signal Dwell Chart: The chart gives you a way to see each device's signal against its own history.
- The Diagnostic Reports: These reports are there to show you what Device Sentinel is learning and show you how it classifies data.
- How Device Sentinel Learns: Each home's devices are learned individually and this chapter explains how Device Sentinel obtains its data.
- Maintenance Mode: Explains what Maintenance Mode is and how to use it.
- The Bridge and Broker Sensors: Highlights the coordinator sensor and the MQTT broker sensor, and what each state means.
- What Is Recorded About Your House: Explains the system level events that Device Sentinel monitors and records.
- Built to Be Efficient: Because Device Sentinel monitors much, this chapter explains how it was built to be as lightweight as possible on system and storage resources.
Device Sentinel recognizes three currently and can read only one. These pages say what each gets, and how you can help to build them out.
- Zigbee2MQTT: Fully read. Pairing windows, bridge outages, and a second opinion on every freeze verdict.
- ZHA: Detected only. If you use ZHA and are willing to work with the developers to build out ZHA support, this document is for you.
- Z-Wave: Detected only. If you use Z-Wave and are willing to work with the developers to build out Z-Wave support, this document is for you.
- FAQ and Troubleshooting: Answers to commonly asked questions.
- Report an Issue: Having trouble? Here is where to get support.