EngineeringUnits and ApplicationType shall not be mandatory for AnalogInput

[tomaszduda23]

esphome/esphome#12187 adds AnalogInput to esphome. It works fine on z2m. For zha it seems that EngineeringUnits or ApplicationType is required

zha/zha/application/platforms/sensor/__init__.py

Lines 624 to 629 in cf2133e

	# The units are determined by one of these
	if (
	self._cluster_handler.application_type is None
	and self._cluster_handler.engineering_units is None
	):
	return False

Those could be mapped to unit_of_measurement and device_class from esphome. Both are optional though.
One possibility would be to make those mandatory in esphome.
Zigbee spec defines EngineeringUnits or ApplicationType as optional. @prairiesnpr any reason to make it mandatory?

[TheJulianJES]

I think the reason for this was to limit the amount of random entities we create for devices that misuse the AnalogInput cluster for other purposes. Aqara uses it for current power consumption.

We might be able to prevent AnalogInput entity creation in all of those quirks and lift this limitation though.

[tomaszduda23]

Another option would be to create EspHomeAnalogInput with manufacturers="esphome" which do not have all those limitations.

[puddly]

Out of curiosity, when would you want an analog input cluster without units?

[prairiesnpr]

If I recall, that's why we had the requirement of EngineeringUnits or ApplicationType, to ensure that we had units for HA.

[tomaszduda23]

Out of curiosity, when would you want an analog input cluster without units?

The idea is to support any numeric entity using analog input (even if not analog). Most of them do not have unit by default in esphome.
analog input, analog output, binary input, binary output would be enough to cover majority of use cases for esphome.

If I recall, that's why we had the requirement of EngineeringUnits or ApplicationType, to ensure that we had units for HA.

It seems that ApplicationType 0x0C : Count is supported which do not have unit. It is nice to have an unit but it is not always the case.

[Hedda]

One possibility would be to make those mandatory in esphome.

Would it be possible to raise suggestion to ESPHome developers? At least then you know if it is not possible to make it mandatory?

[tomaszduda23]

It is already solved on esphome side. You can close it if you like. zha do not follow the spec though.
Thanks for looking into it quickly.