home-assistant-garmin_connect/SENSOR_GROUPS.md

Sensor Groups Feature

Overview

The Garmin Connect integration now supports organizing sensors into logical groups that can be enabled or disabled together. This helps reduce clutter in your Home Assistant instance by only showing the sensors you actually use.

Available Sensor Groups

Enabled by Default

• Activity & Steps: Step counts, distance, floors climbed, and daily goals
• Calories & Nutrition: Calorie tracking including active, burned, consumed, and remaining
• Heart Rate: Heart rate monitoring including resting, min/max, and HRV status
• Stress: Stress levels and duration tracking
• Sleep: Sleep duration, quality scores, and sleep stages
• Body Battery: Garmin Body Battery energy monitoring
• Hydration: Water intake tracking and hydration goals
• Intensity & Activity Time: Active time, sedentary time, and intensity minutes
• Health Monitoring: SpO2 (blood oxygen), respiration rate, and altitude
• Fitness & Performance: Fitness age, endurance score, and metabolic age

Disabled by Default

• Body Composition: Weight, BMI, body fat, muscle mass, and bone mass (requires compatible scale)
• Activity Tracking: Recent activities, badges, points, and gamification
• Advanced Sensors: Additional detailed metrics and alternative measurements

How to Configure

Initial Setup

When you first install the integration, all default sensor groups are enabled automatically. This ensures backward compatibility with previous versions.

Changing Sensor Groups

1. Go to Settings → Devices & Services
2. Find the Garmin Connect integration
3. Click Configure (or the three dots menu → Configure)
4. Select which sensor groups you want to enable
5. Click Submit
6. Reload the integration for changes to take effect

Per-Sensor Control

Even within enabled sensor groups, you can still disable individual sensors:

1. Go to Settings → Devices & Services
2. Find the Garmin Connect integration
3. Click on the device
4. Find the sensor you want to disable
5. Click on it and toggle Enable entity off

Backward Compatibility

• Existing installations: If you upgrade from a previous version, all default sensor groups will be automatically enabled, maintaining your current setup
• Configuration-less: If you never configure sensor groups, all default groups remain enabled
• Individual control: The entity_registry_enabled_default setting on individual sensors still works within enabled groups

Benefits

1. Reduced Clutter: Only see sensors relevant to your use case
2. Performance: Fewer entities to process in Home Assistant
3. Organization: Sensors are logically grouped for easier management
4. Flexibility: Enable/disable entire categories or individual sensors
5. Scalability: Easy to add new sensor categories in the future

Examples

Minimal Setup (Basic Activity Tracking)

Enable only:

• Activity & Steps
• Heart Rate
• Sleep

Comprehensive Health Monitoring

Enable:

• All default groups
• Body Composition (if you have a compatible scale)
• Advanced Sensors (for detailed analysis)

Athlete/Training Focus

Enable:

• Activity & Steps
• Heart Rate
• Stress
• Body Battery
• Intensity & Activity Time
• Fitness & Performance

Technical Details

Storage

Sensor group preferences are stored in the integration's options, separate from the main configuration. This allows:

• Easy reconfiguration without re-authentication
• No impact on existing authentication tokens
• Clean separation of concerns

Implementation

• Sensor descriptions are organized into tuples by category
• A mapping dictionary links group IDs to sensor tuples
• The get_sensors_for_groups() function dynamically builds the sensor list
• Backward compatibility is ensured by checking for None options

Future Enhancements

Potential future additions:

• Export/import sensor group configurations
• Preset configurations for different use cases
• Dynamic group enabling based on detected Garmin device capabilities
• Statistics about which groups are most commonly enabled