Custom Meta Area for open-plan space

[t3chguy]

May be an odd usecase but I have a large open-plan kitchen diner area which in HA is split into two rooms but I tend to not want to turn off lights based on lack of presence in the Kitchen, only lack of presence in the kitchen-diner (both of which are covered by an FP2)

Would be nice to have the ability to create one's own meta-areas to accomplish such cases

[jseidl]

Have you tried adding the kitchen-diner to an area (say, Kitchen) and then force-include it to the Dining room area?

[t3chguy]

Yeah I did later realise that is an option. Still would be nice to get meta light groups and such without needing to manually wrangle helpers. Another workaround would be to fudge the area in HA and put them on their own floor given HA doesn't use floors for anything but magic areas enables a meta area for each floor

[jseidl]

You shouldn't need helpers. You can go to the magic area options "Basic area options" > "Include entities to this area"

[t3chguy]

Sure but then I have to duplicate the lights into both rooms and remember that they're functionally the same, when in reality I like the ability to command Kitchen lights, Kitchen task lights, Dining lights, Dining accent lights distinctly sometimes, grouped others.

[tbrasser]

Same situation, same approach: include sensors or lights in both areas.

I've been thinking of just merging the areas but since I use view-per-area dashboard the combined area would be way too crowded for display on 1 wall tablet view.