Integrating Alpha2MQTT with Home Assistant

Full instructions to get going with an Alpha2MQTT, Raspberry Pi and Home Assistant.

This is an exhaustive guide, fully documented, screenshotted step by step. This will take around 4 to 5 hours to complete, depending on technical experience.

Prerequisites

Alpha2MQTT

Build or obtain an Alpha2MQTT

I recommend you utilise the 3.3v MAX3485 (Red module) if building this yourself. I also recommend the screen. The screen isn't required but it at least provides some initial feedback about whether your build is working. In short, spend the money and spend less time debugging!

Obtain a Raspberry Pi 4 Model B - Preferably 4Gb.

I recommend you use Facebook Marketplace for local deals, however, I personally use a Pi 400 4Gb

The 400 is identical to the plain Raspberry Pi 4 Model B, however you don't need to build and case the device, and it comes with an integrated keyboard and mouse to save you needing to source separate ones. It is still small enough to tuck to one side once it is all up and running.

Create a file called 'setup.txt' for notes

Save it to your desktop, open it in Notepad and have it ready throughout this guide to save account details and links and tokens as you go along.

Downloading files for this endeavour

All files are available from the Alpha2MQTT repository.

For the avoidance of doubt, I'd recommend two ways to download the contents to avoid introducing error by copying text or contents from your web browser.

-The first way is to right click on a file, for example configuration.yaml.txt and left click on the equivalent of 'Save Link As...' in your browser. Save it to a folder of your choosing. -The other way is to download the whole repository as a zip by left clicking on the green 'Code' button on the front page of the repository, and then left click on 'Download zip' Download Repository

Accounts you will need to create if you don't already have

Google

Google is more than just a search engine, with an account you are entitled to free storage called Google Drive, an email address and much much more. You probably have one, but if not, sign up using the link in the header. Add these details to your 'setup.txt'.

We will be leveraging Google to store automated daily Home Assistant backups so that in the case of memory card failure, you can easily restore as was.

GitHub

GitHub is a source code management/collaboration tool, but it is also used for authentication purposes. It is free and well renowed in the software development industry. This guide is hosted on GitHub!

Follow the instructions to set up and activate your account. Add these details to your 'setup.txt'

DuckDNS

DuckDNS is a tool which gives you a static web address for your Internet connection. Why do you need one? Well, unless you have an extremely fancy Internet connection, every time your router reboots or disconnects from the Internet you will get a different IP address for your next connection. This is the IP address which is used to present your local area network to the world and likewise is the address you need to 'dial-in' to your Home Assistant. The reason different IPs are dished out from a large pool and re-used works on the assumption that not everyone is connected at the same time, saving on the actual number of IP addresses needed at any one time. But it is no good saving a link which could change over time because the chances are next time you browse to your bookmark in your web browser it will no longer work!

The solution? When DuckDNS is configured in Home Assistant later any change of IP address is recorded by DuckDNS and DuckDNS gives you a nice fixed and clean URL such as http://mysuperhomeassistantinstall.duckdns.org regardless of what your IP changes to.

Sign up using the link in the header. Click 'Sign in with GitHub' or 'Sign in with Google' and follow the instructions to set up and activate your account. Add these details to your 'setup.txt'

Once logged in, find the domains section and type in an address. This will be used for your Home Assistant. I am going to be using http://mydan-dan-ha.duckdns.org

I recommend you type something fairly unique and something relatively easy. Don't be surprised if you type in something common and it rejects it - as it will be already used by someone else!

Click 'add domain' in green. DuckDNS Add Domain

And it will be added to your account: DuckDNS Added Domain

At the top of your account, please take note of your token and add these details to your 'setup.txt', it will be in the form aaaaaaaa-aaaa-aaaa-aaaa-aaaaaaaaaaaa DuckDNS Token

You can close DuckDNS for now.

Install Home Assistant

This guide assumes you have a Raspberry Pi and are leveraging Home Assistant Operating System. As such, navigate to https://www.home-assistant.io/installation/ and scroll down to Raspberry Pi and click it. Alternatively, navigate directly to https://www.home-assistant.io/installation/raspberrypi

Follow the instructions to utilise Balena Etcher to flash your Raspberry Pi's memory card with the 64-bit edition of Home Assisant OS. At the time of writing, the version is 9.4, URL is https://github.com/home-assistant/operating-system/releases/download/9.4/haos_rpi4-64-9.4.img.xz

You will need your Raspberry Pi to be hard-wired to your router via an Ethernet cable in the first instance. This guide will concentrate on utilising an Ethernet cable throughout, but it will cover how to swap over to Wi-Fi once everything is up and running.

Once flashed, put the memory card in your Raspberry Pi and boot it up.

You will see quite a lot of text scrolling along the screen as it boots up, however once finished you will be presented with the following screen:

Highlighted in this pic are two elements, first is the Local IP address dedicated to your Raspberry Pi by your router. The second is the URL which you can use to access Home Assistant on your local network via a phone, tablet or computer.

As such, open Chrome or any browser of your choice and navigate to http://homeassistant.local:8123/ or in my case, I can navigate to http://192.168.1.112:8123/ as that is the Local IP address given to my Raspberry Pi by my router. Your Local IP address will be different to mine.

Your IP (in my case 192.168.1.112) should be added to your 'setup.txt' file as Alpha2MQTT will need this to post inverter messages later.

Configuring your Router

We need to ensure that

Your Raspberry Pi always gets given the same Local IP address, in my case 192.168.1.112, every time it is booted up. Like your Internet connection, it is no good programming Alpha2MQTT with the current Local IP only for it to change when your router dishes out a different Local IP to your Pi! Your router will work like your Internet IP and re-use IP addresses from a pool for the same reasons of IP address shortage.
Open up port 8123 (the bit after the colon in the address above) to the outside world so you can access your Home Assistant from anywhere.

I am on TalkTalk so although my steps will be unique to TalkTalk users, the principles are the same.

Navigate to your Router's IP in Chrome, usually http://192.168.1.1 or http://192.168.1.254

It will ask you to log in and the username and password is usually on a sticker on the back of your router.

Click into an area of your router's configuration which deals with your connected devices.

In my case this is called 'Manage my devices' but could be known as 'Local Network', etc. Router 1

And sure enough, I can see my homeassistant device: Home Assistant In Router

I click on Advanced so I can change settings, and click into homeassistant: Home Assistant In Router 2

I can click 'Reserve IP' to ensure that my homeassistant always gets the same address and click Apply:

I can click in Port Forwarding to configure the appropriate port to be opened to the outside world.

I will type in a Custom service name of Home Assistant

Leave Protocol as TCP

Leave External host empty

Type 8123 into External Port

and type 8123 into Internal Port Port Config Router

Click Add

Click Apply to finish Port Config Router 2

You can close your router's configuration page now.

Initial Setup of Home Assistant

Once I go to http://homeassistant.local:8123/, I am greeted with:

Get Started

I am going to configure my system with some example details:

Name: Dan
Username: dan
Password: mypass
Confirm Password: mypass

And I'll click Create Account

You should use your full name and a username and password which are secure enough not to be guessed (as your Raspberry Pi will be open to the outside world) and you should add them to your 'setup.txt' so that they aren't forgotten.

The next screen will prompt you for a name, I'd leave it as default for Home because Home Assistant doesn't just cover off linking to Alpha2MQTT, it can also drive any Hue bulbs you may have, Google Nest products and a whole reap of other home automation kit.

Location

I highly recommend you complete where you live, as this will also help solar predictions and ensure your time zones remain correct for Winter and Summer, if you are in the UK think Economy 7 / Octopus Go charging times. Click Next

Choose whether or not you are happy sharing stats and click Next Stats

And the final step will show any services already found on the network. You can see here it has picked up my HomeKit, Google Cast, Office HomePod and Philips Hue lighting. We don't want to configure those yet so just click Finish.

Now you are in and ready with a fresh install of Home Assistant!

We have plenty to configure now, so let's get to it.

Configuring Home Assistant - Advanced Mode

Advanced Mode

Click your name at the bottom left, scroll down and click 'Advanced Mode'

Configuring Home Assistant - Install Add-ons

Click Settings at the bottom left

Click Add-ons

The screen will be empty with an ADD-ON STORE button at the bottom right. Click it.

Add-ons

DuckDNS

Find and click DuckDNS and click INSTALL and wait until completed. Once completed you'll have a START or UNINSTALL option. DuckDNS Install

Just click the back arrow

File editor

Find and click File editor and click INSTALL and wait until completed. Once completed you'll have a START or UNINSTALL option. File editor Install

Click 'Show in sidebar'

Click the back arrow

Mosquitto broker

Find and click Mosquitto broker and click INSTALL and wait until completed. Once completed you'll have a START or UNINSTALL option. Mosquitto broker Install

Just click the back arrow

Node-RED

Find and click Node-RED and click INSTALL and wait until completed. Once completed you'll have a START or UNINSTALL option. Node-RED Install

Click 'Show in sidebar'

Click the 'Configuration' tab

Copy and paste MySecretPa$$Word into the credential_secret box

UNTICK ssl

Node-RED Credentials Click SAVE

Click the back arrow

Google Drive Backup

As per https://github.com/sabeechen/hassio-google-drive-backup

At the top right of the 'Add-on Store' there is a three dot menu button. Click it and click 'Respositories'

Type

https://github.com/sabeechen/hassio-google-drive-backup

into the box and click ADD

Google Drive Backup Then click CLOSE

Refresh the window by pressing F5 on your keyboard

Find and click 'Home Assistant Google Drive Backup' (at the bottom of the store usually) and click INSTALL and wait until completed. Once completed you'll have a START or UNINSTALL option.

Click 'Show in sidebar' Google Drive Installed

Click the back arrow

Terminal & SSH

Find and click Terminal & SSH and click INSTALL and wait until completed. Once completed you'll have a START or UNINSTALL option.

Terminal And SSH Install Click 'Show in sidebar'

Click 'START'

Click the back arrow

HACS

We will now be installing HACS for some extra fun such as chart types. The download link for HACS is https://hacs.xyz/docs/setup/download and we will be following the OS/Supervised route. However, as we have done most of the heavy lifting all we need to do is

Click 'Terminal' on the left

You will be prompted with a terminal interface to type commands.

Type in

wget -O - https://get.hacs.xyz | bash -

Include that minus at the end and that is a capital O, not zero (0). Terminal About To Install

Once completed you should see something like this: Terminal Installed

As you can see, it is recommending you restart. So we will do that now. Click on Developer Tools on the left and click 'RESTART' in red and click RESTART again to confirm. HACS Restart

Wait a while and Home Assistant will be back up and running where you left off.

We need to hard refresh your browser, so in the case of Chrome and most other browsers, hold Control and press F5 on the keyboard. It will ask you to log back in. Use your username and password from earlier. I recommend you tick the 'Keep me logged in' box. Login

Click Settings on the left and click Devices & Services

Click the blue + ADD INTEGRATION at the bottom right.

Scroll down the list to HACS and click it. You will be prompted for several tickboxes you need to tick.

Tick them all and click SUBMIT. HACS Install

It will prompt to authorise the device with GitHub. It's a good job we created an account earlier.

HACS Authorisation Code

Click the green 'Authorise hacs' button.

You can close the Device Activation window and in Home Assistant you will see HACS Done

Just click Finish.

Configuring Home Assistant - Configure Add-ons

OK, let's configure all these Add-ons

Click Settings on the left, click Add-ons and you will see the complete list: Add-ons

Where the icon is black and white, it means it isn't yet running. You will see Terminal & SSH is coloured in because we started it to install HACS via the terminal interface.

Duck DNS:

Click on Duck DNS

Click Configuration at the top

Firstly, you will see a blank domain with an X at the top, delete it by clicking X. Duck DNS Config 1

Get the address you configured in DuckDNS in its entirety handy, in my case, mydan-dan-ha.duckdns.org and get your DuckDNS token handy which should be in your 'setup.txt'.

The configuration page at the time of writing is broken, so click the three dots at the top right of Options and click 'Edit in YAML' Duck DNS Config YAML

In the square brackets in domains:, paste in your address from DuckDNS without the http://, i.e. mydan-dan-ha.duckdns.org

Within the quotes for token:, paste in your token from DuckDNS. Duck DNS Broken Config

Click 'SAVE'

Click the Info tab at the top and click START.

When started, click the Log tab at the top and if successful, you will see a message in green either indicating there's no change, or that it was successfully updated. If it hasn't worked, double check your address, your token, and try again. Duck DNS Success

File editor:

Click back to go back to the Add-ons list.

Click on File editor

Click START. File Editor Started

Home Assistant Google Drive Backup:

Click back to go back to the Add-ons list.

Click on Home Assistant Google Drive Backup

Click START. Google Drive Started

On the left hand menu, click Backups and you will be prompted to Authenticate with Google Drive. Google Drive Setup

Click AUTHENTICATE WITH GOOGLE DRIVE

You may need to sign into your Google account, so do so. Click 'Continue' to allow habackup.io to access your drive.

It will give you an Authorisation String: Google Authorization String

Click the COPY button

Go back to your Home Assistant screen and paste it into the box and click SAVE.

If all is good, you will be prompted with the following: Backup Complete

If the code fails, please check what you pasted and try again.

Node-RED:

Click Settings on the left menu and click Add-ons to go back to the Add-Ons list.

Click Node-RED.

Click START. Backup Complete

Mosquitto broker:

Click the back arrow to go back to the Add-ons list.

Click Mosquitto broker

Click the Configuration tab.

In Logins, paste the following, including the hyphen:

- username: battery
  password: Switch1

battery and Switch1 should be added to your 'setup.txt' file as Alpha2MQTT will need this to post inverter messages.

You can of course choose a different username or password, but this is quite safe for the job. Mosquitto Setup

Click the blue SAVE button.

Click the Info tab at the top.

Click START Mosquitto Started

Click the Log tab at the top. If everything has worked right you should see green messages indicating success. If not, go back to configuration and check your username and password text box. Mosquitto Done

That's all the Add-ons configured for now.

HACS Configuration

Click HACS on the left hand side

Click Integrations

and then click the Frontend tab. HACS Integrations Frontend

Click the blue + EXPLORE & DOWNLOAD REPOSITORIES

We will be installing the following

HACS - card-mod:

Type in card-mod in the 'Search for repository' box HACS - card-mod

Click it when it appears in the list

Click the blue DOWNLOAD button

And click DOWNLOAD in the popup window. Wait for the install. Click RELOAD.

HACS - layout-card:

Click HACS on the left hand side

Click Integrations

and then click the Frontend tab.

Click the blue + EXPLORE & DOWNLOAD REPOSITORIES

Type in layout-card in the 'Search for repository' box HACS - layout-card

Click it when it appears in the list

Click the blue DOWNLOAD button

And click DOWNLOAD in the popup window. Wait for the install. Click RELOAD.

HACS - apexcharts-card:

Click HACS on the left hand side

Click Integrations

and then click the Frontend tab.

Click the blue + EXPLORE & DOWNLOAD REPOSITORIES

Type in apexcharts-card in the 'Search for repository' box HACS - apexcharts-card

Click it when it appears in the list

Click the blue DOWNLOAD button

And click DOWNLOAD in the popup window. Wait for the install. Click RELOAD.

HACS - Power Flow Card:

Click HACS on the left hand side

Click Integrations

and then click the Frontend tab.

Click the blue + EXPLORE & DOWNLOAD REPOSITORIES

Type in Power Flow Card in the 'Search for repository' box HACS - Power Flow Card

Click it when it appears in the list

Click the blue DOWNLOAD button

And click DOWNLOAD in the popup window. Wait for the install. Click RELOAD.

HACS - Sankey Chart Card:

Click HACS on the left hand side

Click Integrations

and then click the Frontend tab.

Click the blue + EXPLORE & DOWNLOAD REPOSITORIES

Type in Sankey Chart Card in the 'Search for repository' box HACS - Sankey Chart Card

Click it when it appears in the list

Click the blue DOWNLOAD button

And click DOWNLOAD in the popup window. Wait for the install. Click RELOAD.

Add-on configuration is now complete.

Configuring Home Assistant - Home Assistant URL

Home Assistant URL

Click Settings on the left hand menu

Click System

Click Network

Scroll down to Home Assistant URL and type in the URL as configured in Duck DNS.

In my example, this is http://mydan-dan-ha.duckdns.org:8123 HAURL

Alpha2MQTT

Gather your details

Now, we need to take the details of our Mosquitto broker now running on our Home Assistant box and plumb them into Alpha2MQTT.

From your 'setup.txt' file, you should have the Local IP Address of your Raspberry Pi. In my case this was 192.168.1.112

You should also have the username and password we configured in Mosquitto. In my case this was

- username: battery
  password: Switch1

I am assuming you have followed the build and configuration instructions on the Alpha2MQTT site, and that you have Arduino open with Alpha2MQTT.ino ready in there.

Editing Definitions.h

Open At the top of the code just after "Update these to match your inverter" there are definitions you need to configure based on what we have just done.

Comment out all the inverters to choose from, aside from the one you are using
Type in your Wi-Fi name between the quotes for WIFI_SSID
Type in your Wi-Fi password between the quotes for WIFI_PASSWORD
Type in your Local IP Address of your Raspberry Pi between the quotes for MQTT_SERVER
Type in your Username you configured in Mosquitto earlier for MQTT_USERNAME, we used battery
Type in your Password you configured in Mosquitto earlier for MQTT_PASSWORD, we used Switch1

Alpha Config

Save your Definitions.h

Remember, if your Wi-Fi changes, you will need to update the WIFI_SSID and WIFI_PASSWORD to suit the new router.
Remember, if your Raspberry Pi changes, you will need to update MQTT_SERVER, MQTT_USERNAME and MQTT_PASSWORD to suit your new config.

Flash your Alpha2MQTT using instructions from the Alpha2MQTT repository.

Node-RED - Alpha Ten Second State.json

This flow imports the data from the ten second state from Alpha2MQTT and presents the results to Home Assistant as sensors.

Download Alpha Ten Second State.json from the Alpha2MQTT GitHub repository

Click Node-RED on the left hand side

After a pause, you will be greeted with the Intro:

Node Red Intro

Skip through the intro

At the top right, click the three-line menu burger and click Import

Node Red Import

Click 'select a file to import' and browse to the Alpha Ten Second State.json downloaded a few steps ago.

Click 'new flow' for Import to

Click Import

Ten Second Flow Settings

It may prompt "Some of the nodes you are importing already exist in your workspace", just choose 'Import Copy'

The flow will appear in the right hand side, and also in a tab at the top. Click the tab:

Ten Second Flow

We just need to configure the Mosquitto details and we are done.

Double click the purple Ten Second Status node on the left and the following properties screen will open:

Ten Second Flow Config

Click the Pencil alongside 'Mosquitto Broker'

On the Connection tab, type in the Local IP of your Raspberry Pi, in my case, this was 192.168.1.112

Broker Node Config

Click on the 'Security' tab and type in our Mosquitto username and password configured earlier.

In my case, these were battery and Switch1

Broker Node Config

Click Update

Click Done

Click Deploy at the top right. Once deployed, you will see that the MQTT node Ten Second Status has connected: Broker Connected

Node-RED - Alpha One Minute State.json

This flow imports the data from the one minute state from Alpha2MQTT and presents the results to Home Assistant as sensors.

Download Alpha One Minute State.json from the GitHub repository and follow the steps as per Node-RED - Alpha Ten Second State.json