GA treats ClimateSensor as Thermostat (keeps saying "temperature is off" even though there is no heating mode)

Apps & Services Google Assistant
1

I have a few sensors around my apartment that measure temperature and humidity.
A while ago, it was only possible to get those working with GA by setting up a thermostat group and reporting that to Google. A downside of that was that whenever I asked GA for the temperature, it would say “Temperature is off and it’s currently X degrees” instead of just “it’s currently X degrees”. It was annoying, but I can see why that happens.

I just noticed the recent addition of a ClimateSensor type, which sounds like a much better fit for my sensors. I changed the configuration accordingly:

Group Wohnzimmer_ClimateSensor "Temperatur" <temperature> (Wohnzimmer) {ga="ClimateSensor" [roomHint="Wohnzimmer"]}
Number:Temperature Wohnzimmer_Temperatur "Wohnzimmer Temperatur [%.2f %unit%]" <temperature> (Wohnzimmer_ClimateSensor) {ga="temperatureAmbient", channel="..."}
Number:Dimensionless Wohnzimmer_Temperatur_Humidity "Wohnzimmer Luftfeuchtigkeit [%d %%]" <humidity> (Wohnzimmer_ClimateSensor) {ga="humidityAmbient", channel="..."}

When I now ask for the temperature, I still get “Temperature is off and it’s currently X degrees”. I would expect Google to treat this as a plain sensor now and just tell me the temperature. The Additional Configuration section mentions a queryOnly=true setting for OpenClose items. I tried adding it anyway and it makes no difference.

Of course, I said “Okay Google, sync my devices” countless of times, deleted the tmp and cache directories in /var/lib/openhab3 and restarted OH.

Is there anything I can do about this? Is it a bug on OH’s or GA’s side?

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Hi. This is a accepted compromise we currently have to live with.

It seems that this is “just” a strange behaviour by Google we can not influence.
That means your setup is fine.

I tested it on my side and also my Google tells the temperature AND that the sensor is off.
Actually no “on/off” state is provided and it seems that Google handles it like “off”.
I also tested different states which led to even worse answers, where the temperature is not even told anymore.

Furthermore, we also had to do a bit strange setups to make sensors also work with Google Home AND Google Nest Hub devices. Again “just” a sh***y thing Google is doing…

So let’s hope they get their stuff improved.

Sorry :confused:

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