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Dashboard 3 - Activity & Config Log

File: dashboards/dashboard_3_log.yaml

What it is

A dedicated, standalone dashboard (imported separately, not a tab inside Dashboard 2) answering “what did the system do, and who/what changed what, and when?” Requested explicitly: device on/off history and configuration change history, both timestamped and attributed to whoever or whatever made the change.

Why it’s just Logbook cards, not a custom log

Home Assistant’s built-in Logbook already records every state change with full context - it just isn’t surfaced anywhere in this project’s other dashboards. Rather than building a second, custom audit trail (e.g. an input_text helper that automations append log lines to), this dashboard is five type: logbook cards, each scoped to a specific group of entities (every logbook card itself is stock Lovelace, no HACS dependency; as of Phase 9, 2026-08-28, the two static explainer notes on this page are collapsed inside a custom:expander-card instead - see “Growlink polish” in dashboard-2-climate.md):

  • Device Activity - all 13 switch.grow_actuator_* proxies (every mapped actuator).
  • Climate Configuration & Automation Status - the Phase 3 setpoints, mode, and status flags from packages/grow_climate.yaml.
  • Entity Mapping Changes - all 33 input_text.grow_map_* helpers from Dashboard 1.
  • Core Settings - irrigation base parameters and substrate-average include toggles from packages/grow_core.yaml.
  • Grow Tracker Changes - cycle dates and harvest status from packages/grow_tracker.yaml.

Each entry shows when it happened and who or what triggered it, automatically, using Home Assistant’s own context system:

  • Changed via the dashboard/Settings -> Helpers UI by a logged-in person -> “Changed by <username>”.
  • Changed by the climate regulation automation (or any future automation) -> “triggered by automation <automation name>”.
  • A device reporting its own new state (e.g. someone flipped a physical switch, or a Zigbee2MQTT device pushed an update) -> shown as that device/entity being the source.

This means the attribution requirement (“who did the change and when”) comes for free from Home Assistant’s existing audit trail, and can never drift out of sync with reality the way a hand-maintained log could.

Limitations

  • Each card shows the last 7 days (hours_to_show: 168) to stay fast. For anything older, open Home Assistant’s native Logbook page directly (/logbook) - no time limit there, and it has its own date-range and entity filters.
  • Retention overall is governed by your recorder: configuration (Phase 0 plan Section 4.5) - if you need months of history instead of the Recorder’s default window, that’s the same SQLite -> MariaDB/InfluxDB migration path already documented there, not something specific to this dashboard.
  • Config helpers changed by an automation that isn’t the regulation automation described above (e.g. the Grow Tracker auto-fill automation setting grow_tracker_cycle_id) show up the same way - attributed to that automation by name.