I think it's a good idea.
My todo list for mysensors is already very long and I have limited time, though, so I don't think I will code this up soon. It shouldn't be very difficult though, so anyone is welcome to have a go and make a pull request. I'll happily review.
https://www.home-assistant.io/components/mysensors/#presentation
Home assistant only supports ethernet gateways that act as servers. So home assistant will connect as the client, ie we only configure the gateway address in home assistant, not the other way around.
If you changed the optimistic setting, actuators will have assumed state and this will show in the ui as two different buttons for on and off.
I recommend to not use optimistic setting, but instead feedback the new state to home assistant.
You need to send/feedback the new state to home assistant from the node in the receive function. Otherwise home assistant thinks the message was not received by the node. This behavior is modified by the optimistic setting in the mysensors config section.
V_IR_RECORD isn't yet supported by home assistant.
I think you will get the best help regarding USB exposure in Hass.io in the Hass.io section of the home assistant community forum.
I'm using hassbian.
Are you using Hass.io?
The config validation when using Hass.io doesn't seem reliable.
I've never used Hass.io so I can't really help you better than this. You can try to search this forum and the home assistant forum for similar questions.
Have you read about the mysensors network?
https://www.mysensors.org/about/network
You need to have basic knowledge of the different parts of a mysensors network before you start configuring the controller.
You should also read about the different gateway options.
https://www.mysensors.org/build/select_gateway
If you know the different parts of the network you will more easily understand how to configure the controller.
This is on my todo list. I hope to get to it soon.
You need to feedback the state change to home assistant by sending the new state from the receive function after the calls to digitalWrite and saveState.
Add the following line in the receive function eg after the call to digitalWrite.
send(msg.set(state));
You need to feedback and send the changed state to home assistant, after writing the new state to the pin, in the receive function. Otherwise home assistant thinks that the message to change state did not reach the node, and returns to the old state.
It should be compatible as 2.2.0 is not a breaking change, as far as I know.
Please edit your post and put the sketch within code blocks so it's readable.
I think you need to specify the absolute path to the persistence file. It should be in a directory where home assistant has write permission. Usually the configuration directory is good.
@antonholmstedt
If a node is unknown it means that it hasn't sent proper presentation messages.
A debug log from home assistant and a serial log from the node in question might shed some light. Usually this problem comes from messages not reaching the gateway.
Nothing has changed in the mysensors component lately. I don't know what Hass.io could have done to affect mysensors.
Which was the last release of home assistant and Hass.io that worked properly? We need more info to pinpoint this.
Currently you can hack it by adding those value types and values to the JSON persistence file, keeping the structure. It's not a real solution, but should work. They will get represented as sensor entities in home assistant. If you want to avoid entity_id clashes the V_VAR1 and V_VAR3 should be placed on different children.
I have on the roadmap to add an option for inital values in the mysensors home assistant config section.
Serial logs from both a node and gateway can usually help pinpointing issues in the mysensors part of the comm link. This can also be used to rule out problems in that part.
Is the mysensors serial gateway running on a standalone arduino connected via USB to the RPi3?
A child device represented by S_DIMMER requires both V_PERCENTAGE and V_STATUS in home assistant. This is mentioned here:
https://home-assistant.io/components/light.mysensors/
So you need to send initial values of both V_PERCENTAGE and V_STATUS, and update those value types when state changes, to have an operating device.
If you only need on/off you should present a S_BINARY child device with V_STATUS value type. This will be a switch in home assistant:
https://home-assistant.io/components/switch.mysensors/
I've looked at the home assistant log you've provided. Unfortunately I think I would need a serial log from the node to get more info. It's weird that you get an error about unit of measurement, since all values should be validated when leaving pymysensors before entering the home assistant layer.
If I would guess, I'd say that some message is not sent/received and presentation not fully performed.
I would recommend to change your sketch and keep one sensor value per child sensor, ie not both V_VOLTAGE and V_CURRENT in one child. Home assistant expects one value per child for normal sensors. Only complex entities like cover should report more than one value. It will avoid entity_id clashes.
That's good at least. Then the home assistant core feature of installing requirements seems to work in your installation.
I'll have a look at the log messages and see if I can find the problem.
I'll post back later tonight.
What version of pyserial is installed inside the virtual environment?
sudo su -s /bin/bash homeassistant
cd /srv/homeassistant
source bin/activate
pip3 show pyserial
Pymysensors and home assistant requires pyserial version 3.1.1 or higher. This should be installed automatically when installing and running home assistant with mysensors activated. If it doesn't do that something with your install and environment is not operating normally.
How have you installed home assistant?
Yes, something like that.
I'm not familiar with the irrigation controller code. But your log is missing the output about sending values, so I assume it's missing from the sketch.
What version of mysensors are you using? Your sketch is using a pre 2.0 library api. I suggest you use the latest mysensors library version and update your sketch to use the current api.
Read the api documentation on the mysensors site for more info.
You need to send initial values for each device. That's what's missing.
Also remove the mysensors sensor platform from your configuration yaml. That's not needed.
Yes. There are two ways of interacting with the device to make a state change. Either by pressing the button or by sending a message from home assistant to the device. The send command you showed above will only happen if the button is pressed when the loop is running.
When you send a message from home assistant to the device, to change the state, the message will be received in your sketch by the receive function.
So you need to add a send command to the receive function and send the new state back to home assistant after doing the digitalWrite call and saving the state.
Something like this:
send(msg.set(state));
The arduino mega runs at 16 MHz so that if block won't be entered, and the define of baud rate won't change.
In your example above you never send the feedback from receive. Use the send method
from within receive to do that.
In what sketch have you set baud rate to 38400? For the light device or for the gateway? It's only the gateway baud rate that is relevant for home assistant config, since it's the gateway that interfaces via the serial connection to home assistant.
As you also suspect I think the gateway is rebooting at a regular interval. In my experience this can be due to two causes. Either due to a bug that was present in an older core arduino firmware version or due to the gateway doesn't get enough power to handle sending of messages. Sending messages requires more power than receiving messages.
How did you program the gateway, ie what software and what version of software did you use? How do you power the gateway? Do you use the recommended capacitor close to the radio?
See this post for info on arduino core versions with the bug:
https://forum.mysensors.org/topic/6257/ethernet-gateway-home-assitant/4
It was solved in version 1.6.18.
You should send feedback of state changes to home assistant from your device. This is done from the receive function. The switch in home assistant will switch as soon as the feedback comes in.
Also set optimistic to false in your mysensors config section.
@maty
If you read the Z-wave documentation I linked to you will get instructions how to add a specific USB device to Hass.io docker. My guess is this could solve your problem.
For some devices the /dev/ttyAMA0 device is not detected by udev and is therefore not mapped by Docker. To explicitly set this device for mapping to Home-Assistant, execute the following command using the ssh add-on:
$ curl -d '{"devices": ["ttyAMA0"]}' http://hassio/homeassistant/options
Replace ttyAMA0 above with the correct device in your case.
That thread is about attaching the radio directly to the RPi GPIO in combination with Hass.io. You're using an arduino as gateway that has the radio if I understand correctly. So you shouldn't need an addon for your case.
I suggest looking at the Z-wave documentation for Hass.io where they also connect a USB device. It's the same principle as the mysensors serial gateway when you use an arduino as gateway.
No mysensors devices will be visible in home assistant until they are presented and send their first values to home assistant. So only having a gateway without sensors will not generate any mysensors entities in home assistant.
You can read more about presenting your mysensors devices to home assistant here:
https://home-assistant.io/components/mysensors/#presentation
Yes, I would recommend that. From personal experience computer usb powered unos are unstable. Make sure you have a capacitor close to the radio, as recommended in the radio guide on the mysensors site, too.
Yes, the controller and gateway needs to be running the first time your present a node and sensor.
You also might want to look into the power supply and stability of your gateway, since it seemed to reboot when it sent the request for new presentation.
I think this plugin does what you want:
https://atom.io/packages/remote-ftp
I use atom editor where there's a plugin that can automatically format the json prettily. But we can add formatting to the dump, I don't see anything hindering that.
I'll happily except a PR that adds indentation to the json dump. Otherwise I can do it when I find some time.
There's already a built in low level mechanism for three resends, if I remember correctly. I'd suggest to try to make the radio communication more stable than to try to add resend of messages on a high level. Try to change power source for more and more stable power. Try to change radio for another sample.
How are you powering the gateway?
You can also play around with the power setting of the radio, low-max. Both higher and lower setting can make a difference.
The NACKs suggests the radio communication is not always working. Make sure you follow the radio setup best practices. See here for troubleshooting flow chart:
https://forum.mysensors.org/topic/666/debug-faq-and-how-ask-for-help
0;255;3;0;2;
This is just the controller asking the gateway for version, as a way to check the ethernet connection is still alive.
I think you can set force_update to true under customize for the entity in question.
It seems it's not possible to customize that property.
Your mysensors home assistant config is missing the value for the device key. In your case it should be mqtt.
To send commands, you use the services that each home assistant platform registers as you normally would, eg turn_on.
The new state is stored in the pymysensors library until achieved. Commands that doesn't change state are stored in a queue in the same library.
It's normal. Home assistant requests the gateway version every 10 seconds as a test that the connection to the gateway is still OK.
My guess is that the arduino gateway reboots every two seconds, either due to a bug in the core arduino library or due to low power availability when sending from the radio.
See similar topic:
https://forum.mysensors.org/topic/7187/problem-adding-nodes-to-ha/2
Add a wait call after sending the initial value. I don't understand why you want to invert the saved state before sending it to the controller.
Don't invert the state before you send it back to the controller . Ie this part:
state?false:true
should be:
state?true:false
in the receive function.
You don't send an initial value of the child to home assistant.
https://home-assistant.io/components/mysensors/#presentation
If I had the time, I would be interested in learning more about how hass.io works and how to make an addon. But at the moment I don't think I have the time unfortunately. I'd be happy to answer questions on the parts of mysensors and home assistant I do know, if someone would want to take this on.
After writing the image to an SD card, you have 1 click install process of popular services like mosquitto, letsencrypt etc via addons. There are some featured addons and 3rd party addons already. Possibility to write your own addon too.
I would say hass.io is for people that don't want the hassle of maintaining a server with a handful of different services running or more. The goal is easy install, setup and maintenance of a fully featured home automation hub.
Limitations are that you can't install regular packages. You need a docker container (addon) for everything more or less.
Just a guess, but I think you would need a hass.io addon that runs the mysensors raspberry pi gateway software, besides exposing the GPIO correctly.
Hi! Yes, pure sensors will default to force updates.
This is how I did it for the Sensebender Micro:
https://forum.mysensors.org/topic/2725/sensebender-micro/29
It sounds as you currently only have one arduino that acts both as a gateway and motion sensor and you don't have any other devices talking to the gateway via nrf radio. If so it's OK to have the gateway sleeping as long as you don't plan to send messages to it. But if you plan to send messages to the arduino via mqtt from home assistant and/or connect other arduino via radio to the gateway, the gateway is not allowed to sleep. You can use wait instead to suspend execution.
This is the most basic switch example controlling a relay:
#include <MySensor.h>
#include <SPI.h>
#define SN "Relay"
#define SV "1.0"
#define CHILD_ID 1
#define RELAY_PIN 3
bool initialValueSent = false;
MyMessage msgRelay(CHILD_ID, V_STATUS);
void setup()
{
digitalWrite(RELAY_PIN, 0);
// Initialize the digital pin as an output.
pinMode(RELAY_PIN, OUTPUT);
}
void presentation() {
sendSketchInfo(SN, SV);
present(CHILD_ID, S_BINARY);
}
void loop()
{
if (!initialValueSent) {
Serial.println("Sending initial value");
send(msgRelay.set(0));
Serial.println("Requesting initial value from controller");
request(CHILD_ID, V_STATUS);
wait(2000, C_SET, V_STATUS);
}
}
void receive(const MyMessage &message)
{
if (message.type == V_STATUS) {
if (!initialValueSent) {
Serial.println("Receiving initial value from controller");
initialValueSent = true;
}
// Change relay state.
digitalWrite(RELAY_PIN, message.getInt() ? 1 : 0);
send(msgRelay.set(message.getInt() ? 1 : 0));
}
}
Are you using the mysensors component in home assistant or are you defining your sensor yourself directly using the mqtt component and mqtt sensor platform? If you're using the mysensors component you don't need to change anything in the home assistant configuration, you just need to present the mysensors switch properly to home assistant and home assistant will add it as a switch entity automatically.
Could be a baudrate mismatch or something interfering with the serial port.
Hi! Home assistant sends a request for gateway version every 10 seconds and if the gateway doesn't respond with version within another 10 seconds, home assistant disconnects from the gateway and tries to reconnect.
Have you monitored your gateway serial port during these tests? Seeing that side of the conversation would be interesting. The gateway not responding to the version request is a sign that something is not working properly with the gateway, or that it is unstable. Once I had this issue when I had built the gateway sketch with an avr version that had a bug, and caused the gateway to reboot when starting the communication.
This post describes what version of avr had the bug:
https://forum.mysensors.org/topic/6257/ethernet-gateway-home-assitant/4
Yeah, I would guess it's on the gateway side, and I would guess that the radio doesn't get enough stable power. How are you powering the gateway? In my experience USB power from a regular USB port can often be not good enough. It might work sometimes, but often leads to failures when the gateway should send and needs more power.
Adding a capacitor is a first step before replacing radio or power source though.
Yeah, the last line in the serial log of the gateway says that it didn't receive an acknowledgement from node 3 when sending parent ID to node 3. Something with the radio communication seems to not work 100%. You can use the debug flowchart in the sticky thread in the troubleshooting section of the forum to try to find the cause.
Here:
https://forum.mysensors.org/topic/666/debug-faq-and-how-ask-for-help
The mysensors component will try to load a device_tracker platform during setup. But I didn't think a failure of one platform would stop all updates.
Is that your only error in the log?
How did you install home assistant? Is the home path correct in the error log messages?
Looking at the JSON persistence file, child 5 and 6 have empty value objects, child 7 and 8 look good. You need to send at least one initial value per child to home assistant before the entity can be added.
You should see entities for children 7and 8.
Each gateway should have its own slot in the list of gateways in the mysensors section in the home assistant config. You also need to configure separate radio channels for each gateway if the gateway has a radio. Eg:
mysensors:
gateways:
- device: '192.168.1.11'
persistence_file: 'path/mysensors1.json'
tcp_port: 5003
- device: '192.168.1.12'
persistence_file: 'path/mysensors2.json'
tcp_port: 5003
optimistic: false
persistence: true
retain: true
version: 2.0
Each network can only have one gateway, and the gateway will always have node id 0.
The page you linked to only shows the pure sensor types supported. Look at the other platform pages to see the rest of the supported types. There's very few types not supported.
For RGBW see https://home-assistant.io/components/light.mysensors/.
Hi! This is a known issue on the home assistant side. I have a fix in progress but it's not ready yet.
You should be able to work around it by not sending values too frequently until the entity is added to home assistant, if you only have one value type.
https://github.com/home-assistant/home-assistant/issues/8243
I made something like that here:
https://forum.mysensors.org/topic/4923/ota-firmware-updating-is-too-slow/13
void request(uint8_t childSensorId, uint8_t variableType, uint8_t destination);
See "Requesting data" here:
https://www.mysensors.org/download/sensor_api_20
Ok, so it was just a copy-paste leftover in the feature description from the nrf version.
How's the compatability 5 V arduino and RFM69 achieved? As I understand the RFM69 inputs are not 5 V tolerable.
Your guess is correct.
It's not that you shouldn't include that part when sharing ip address. Including that part will configure the gateway to act as a client instead of a server. Home assistant expects to connect as a client and that the gateway should be the server. That's why you got an error about connection refused.
Hi!
All the answers that you've already found yourself should be available on these two pages, except the structure of entity_ids for mysensors devices. The latter is something we should add to the docs.
https://home-assistant.io/docs/configuration/devices/
https://home-assistant.io/docs/configuration/customizing-devices/
Are you using persistence with a pickle file? I think I've found a bug in that scenario.
PR with fix:
https://github.com/home-assistant/home-assistant/pull/7057
If you're using the mysensors component in home assistant, you can activate persistence to load devices and last known state when home assistant restarts.
Another option is to use the retain flag when publishing mqtt messages from the gateway. Support for this has been added in mysensors dev branch:
https://github.com/mysensors/MySensors/pull/793
In the temperature class, when you send in the new temperature, you set the sensor to 1. That means you connect the message with child 1, which is the door child. Remove that part of that line, and you should be good.
I also think it's the radio transmissions that causes the sensor to trigger. One thing that happens every 20 min by default is the gateway sends a discover request broadcast. This will force all repeaters to resend that broadcast. You can test to change the interval of this broadcast at the gateway and see if the false triggers timing follows.
The setting is called MY_TRANSPORT_DISCOVERY_INTERVAL_MS. You can define this in the gateway sketch to override the default setting.
Hi!
You can add print statements of the different variables to the receive method to see more what's going on.
Also, I suggest you post the serial logs and home assistant debug log and your full sketch, to help me or others to troubleshoot this better.
I see a problem. Your topic prefix reported in the gateway log is not the same as the prefixes you have set in the home assistant config for mysensors.
Child id is not the same as node id. Use MY_NODE_ID if you want to set a static node id in the sketch.
If you have the controller connected, ie home assistant, it should answer the request for ID. That doesn't seem to happen.
Hi!
The persistence file will be created automatically when the first updates come in from your sensor(s). The first time you start home assistant with mysensors activated, this log warning is expected.
Home assistant supports serial, ethernet and mqtt gateways. You can have multiple gateways connected to home assistant at the same time.
The gateway connection type decides how the controller should communicate with the gateway, but it doesn't change the mysensors serial API. Messages between gateway and controller will still have the same structure. They will just be sent over different transport protocols.
The controller doesn't care about what type of device is on the other end, it only cares about the transport protocol and the serial API to use for messages.
Regarding choosing gateway type, I suggest you try something and see how it works for you. Since you already have mqtt set up you could start with the ESP and try connecting it via Wifi+mqtt.
A serial gateway is probably the easiest to set up. Just take care to match baud rate settings on device with controller, depending on what device you chose as gateway.
Read more on the mysensors site.
The capacitor should be added as close as possible to the vcc and gnd pins of the radio. Where did you put the capacitor? Also, with mysensors 2.x, many are reporting requiring a higher value capacitor. Try with 47 uF.
You can also try increasing the distance between node and gateway. Sometimes too short distance can generate trouble.
The majority of messages in your logs are find parent requests and responses. If you have more than a pair of those you have communication problems, it's as simple as that.
You need to get reliable communication going to avoid losing messages and be able to present your node and sensors properly to the controller.
Hi!
If using JSON persistence, you can manually edit the JSON persistence file and remove old stale sensors. Make sure your retain the JSON structure.
Hi!
You have communication (radio) problems between node and gateway. These are usually power and/or distance related. Follow the troubleshooting schema in the sticky thread top post in the troubleshooting category in the forum.
Home assistant requires presented node, sketch name, presented sensor and initial value from the sensor, before adding the sensor to home assistant as an entity. In your case many messages were not received by the gateway, so the requirements were not fulfilled.
Usually sensors will send initial values quite soon, so the check for initial values and request from node to controller is mostly important for devices that don't send messages without manual interaction, ie actuators like switches or lights.
No problem, glad to hear about user stories.
Can you explain a bit more, what you mean with IR receive via dev panel? IR receive is a sensor type, right? It should be possible already to update any states in the states dev panel. Maybe I'm not following completely?
Contributing in the form of feedback on what works and don't work is very appreciated. If you want to try Python, pull request for bug fixes or new features is also welcome. Thanks!
Yes, like that, for both cases.
You need to send at least one initial value of the sensor to home assistant, to have the sensor added to home assistant. Also feedback the new value to home assistant in the receive function when a state change occurs.