Distinguish 'unavailable' and 'not provided'

[RoboMagus]

Looking at the /config/entities page in HA we can filter entities by status, where HA is able to distinguish between entities that are merely unavailable or not provided. The difference is in my case best explained as an entity in an Esphome device that is offline, versus an entity that was removed from the Esphome config (e.g. an orphaned entity).

Sadly both these states show up as unavailable, but it seems HA is able to indicate no longer provided entities by adding a restored=True flag to the state object.

It'd be nice to filter out entities that are expected to go offline every once in a while, but still have them indicated when they would be no longer provided.

[dummylabs]

It seems like a great idea to me. From what I understand, not_provided is essentially a subcategory of unavailable in Home Assistant. That is, an entity can be unavailable and not_provided, but not the other way around. To differentiate between these states, we should introduce two additional states:

• offline for unavailable and restored=False
• not_provided for unavailable and restored=True.

And unavailable will encompass both of these new states. It may seem a bit redundant, but should be effective.