[Idea]: Outdoor-aware telemetry

[senyo888]

What problem are you trying to solve?

HI can currently advise opening a window without knowing whether the outdoor air is actually drier than the indoor air. In warm, rainy or humid conditions, opening a window could introduce more moisture and make the situation worse.

When outdoor conditions are unavailable, HI cannot confidently say whether natural ventilation will help.

What would you like HI to improve?

Explore optional outdoor-aware telemetry for ventilation guidance.

so that the user could explicitly configure outdoor temperature and humidity sensors, with a weather entity considered only as an optional lower-confidence fallback. HI could compare indoor and outdoor absolute humidity or dew point and report:

• Ventilation likely to help
• Ventilation unlikely to help
• Outdoor conditions unavailable or too stale to assess

The first version should be advisory only and should not operate windows automatically.

What kind of idea is this?

Automation or control suggestion

What area is affected?

Runtime control, Alerts or risk handling, Current Air Control panel, Setup or options flow

What rooms, devices, integrations, or dashboards are affected?

Rooms where HI recommends ventilation or opening a window. The idea may use explicitly selected outdoor temperature and humidity sensors or, where appropriate, an optional weather entity.

What should HI avoid doing?

• Do not claim opening a window will help when outdoor conditions are unknown, unavailable, or stale.
• Do not compare relative humidity alone.
• Do not make an outdoor or weather integration mandatory.
• Do not operate windows automatically in the initial scope.
• Do not introduce another control lane or change existing lane priority.
• Do not calculate independent control advice in dashboard cards.

Why would this help?

It would make ventilation advice more trustworthy and prevent HI from recommending an action that could bring additional moisture indoors. It would also explain clearly why opening a window is likely to help, unlikely to help, or cannot currently be assessed.

Have you seen a similar issue or proposal?

Related community discussion:
#28

Optional screenshots, examples, diagnostics, or workaround

Discussion #28 contains the initial community example and feedback:

https://github.com/senyo888/humidity-intelligence/discussions/28

No diagnostics are required at this stage because this is a design and guidance proposal rather than a confirmed runtime fault.

[github-actions]

Thanks for opening your first Humidity Intelligence issue. It is good to have you here.

Humidity Intelligence is built around deterministic behaviour, environmental stability, explainable decisions, and transparent runtime truth. Useful reports help keep that standard strong.

When it fits the issue, please include:

• Home Assistant version
• Humidity Intelligence version
• diagnostics bundle or relevant diagnostic output
• screenshots, especially of the generated dashboard or reason panel
• reason panel text for the selected lane, gate, alert, or degraded state

If this is an enhancement idea, community discussion and the proposal process are the right place to shape it. Clear problems, real examples, and constructive tradeoffs help maintainers assess the idea, but discussion does not mean every idea will be accepted for implementation.

Thanks for helping make Humidity Intelligence easier to support, explain, and improve.

[senyo888]

Bella Triage Report — #113
Verdict: Accept for proposal review, but do not schedule implementation yet.
The idea is architecturally worthwhile, but it is not a small telemetry addition. Implementing it would create a new source of user-facing advice, requiring defined ownership, freshness rules, confidence thresholds, entity semantics, diagnostics, configuration and generated-card support.
The main risk is misleading certainty. Missing, stale or weak outdoor data must produce Unable to assess, never a ventilation recommendation. Any advice must be calculated by the backend and must not affect lane priority, existing output control or CO protection.
Bella recommends drafting a bounded proposal for advisory-only guidance. Separately, the existing card-authored ventilation wording should be reviewed because it currently offers advice without outdoor context.