Question - Intended purpose of "binary_sensor.<BI system name>_alerts"

[keithfree]

What is the intended purpose of the "binary_sensor._alerts" sensor? I'm trying to understand what functionality I'm missing due to this open issue about unique ID's.

Given the main readme says it "represents whether there is an active alert or not," I'm thinking it's a computed value that would be on/true/enabled as long as any of my cameras has any active alert triggered (motion, audio, external, DIO).

Is this correct?

[kramttocs]

Maybe? I've never really looked into that much.
Mine seems to always show on/problem.

I did just look and if I trigger a camera then the attributes of the alerts sensor become:

friendly_name: Home Alerts
device_class: problem
: Home Alerts
External: Home Driveway External

Once the triggering ends:

friendly_name: Home Alerts
device_class: problem
: Home Alerts

So 1) I don't know why it doesn't turn 'off' and 2) I don't know what the ': Home Alerts' attribute means.

[keithfree]

My alert sensor always shows on/problem too, but given this (#85) other issue, I assume that's because the alert entity never gets updated, leaving me to conclude that there must have been at least one active alert in BI at the time I initially installed this integration....or so the theory goes.

@kramttocs Would you have any idea where in the source code the answer to this question might lie? My python reading skills are not great, but this seems like a decent opportunity to improve them. It is interesting to see that your alert sensor did change, albeit minimally, when you triggered one camera. For kicks, do you see the exact same attribute change if TWO cameras were triggered by your test instead of one?