Card should display "Camera unavailable..." even if Frigate integration is not loaded

[felipecrs]

Checklist:

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[REQUIRED] Card diagnostic information:

Diagnostics are not available when the card is in this state.

[REQUIRED] Description of problem:

When the Frigate integration is not loaded (like right after rebooting the Home Assistant OS when Frigate is running as an add-on), the card will show this error:

However, I believe it should have showed this instead:

For two reasons:

1. That is way more user friendly and better represents the state of the entity. In this card specifically I don't even use any Frigate-specific feature, which makes it even more confusing.
2. This error will not auto-recover once the entity is back available. The Camera unavailable... handle recovering just fine.

See a demonstration:

chrome_MuBFJmpZXT.mp4

type: custom:advanced-camera-card
cameras:
  - camera_entity: camera.video_porteiro
    live_provider: image
    image:
      refresh_seconds: 1
profiles:
  - low-performance
dimensions:
  aspect_ratio_mode: static
  aspect_ratio: "16:9"
menu:
  style: none

To provoke this issue, you can:

1. Turn off Frigate
2. Reload Frigate integration, wait for it to enter unload state
3. Check the card

[OPTIONAL] Last working release (if known): N/A

[OPTIONAL] Javascript errors shown in the web inspector: N/A

[OPTIONAL] Additional information: N/A

[dermotduffy]

Totally understand what you mean from a UX perspective. Internally though, the errors mean really different things and are from totally different parts of the code -- one is the live view cannot render the camera since the entity is unavailable, in the other it is events/thumbnails that can't be fetched (the latter is the one you don't like).

A few alternatives (would need to figure out feasibility):

1. Just ignore event fetch errors, perhaps log them to the JS console, but otherwise just render the card as usual. There'd just be no thumbnails until the user next refreshes / clicks around / changes the view / camera triggers.
2. As in option 1, but continue to retry in the background.

[felipecrs]

Also I wonder why the card is even trying to fetch events or thumbnails. I have disabled these card features as far as I understand.

[dermotduffy]

Also I wonder why the card is even trying to fetch events or thumbnails. I have disabled these card features as far as I understand.

I should read my own error message. It's attempting to subscribe to the events feed on camera initialization, not fetch events. Another option (and generally good idea) would be to not subscribe if the camera doesn't configure triggers (which it does by default, but at least you could override it).

[felipecrs]

Hm... What about not subscribing if the camera is unavailable?

[dermotduffy]

Hm... What about not subscribing if the camera is unavailable?

Certainly could, although as you know the entity state is somewhat arbitrary. Just because a given camera entity is unavailable, doesn't mean that Frigate necessarily is.

As this is used for triggering, it feels less okay to let the camera initialize if it cannot subscribe -- since the user might be depending on that trigger later for something important.

[felipecrs]

In my particular case I don't use triggering either, but I'm not sure how easily detachable it is.

Also I personally trust the entity availability, and I think it should be improved to be made more reliable if it's not already.

But maybe the best would be to add some sort of Frigate availability check then, similar to the camera unavailable handling, it would retry until it's back.