mgtt on local network with mosquitto

[hakha4]

Just found out that there is a mqtt version for connecting to Alexa. Tried to configure for local network but complaining about userid (for Alexa). Is there a way to bypass Alexa (unavaliable in Sweden) and connect to mosquitto on an rpi ? My aim is to send ir from Home assistant via mqtt integration. BTW thank's for a awesome program! Any hint's appreciated Regards Håkan

[mdhiggins]

I actually just started using and setting up home assistant this week, I'll update the branch to support this once I've got more figured out. HA seems solid but lots to learn as a noob.

Since I'm new to home assistant, how exactly were you planning to configure things so I can mirror your setup and try and get things working ASAP

[hakha4]

I'm quite new to home assistant also but beginning to manage the basics now. In HA there is a integration called MQTT where one can subscribe to a topic and my plan is to try implement that. Since I'm not planning to expose data outside my local network an option not to have TSL security on Mosquitto would be first choice (seems to be messy to set up, at least for a non proffesional). Mosquitto resides in docker on a raspberry pi.

I have a regular ESP8266 IR-blaster that works like a charm and a 'brutal' way to send IR from HA is to create a button and in click event choose 'URL' and put in same info as in a web browser. Works but the problem is that IR-blaster webpage opens and you loose focus from HA, so one option could be if one could tell IR-blaster to send IR without open the webpage but MQTT maybe a more universal approach. There must be a number of users that use both HA and IR-blaster so someone might have input on this. Regards Håkan

[Ian-Zz]

I am also very interested in an mqtt friendly version of this blaster. I tried the mqtt version and I just never could get it loaded and working well if at all.

I mentioned it in a previous "issue" but would love to use IR received commands to activate switches and scripts etc in Home Assistant. It seems mqtt would make this nearly a no brainer. Aka my style.

Nice too would be able to have pretty good control over the pub and sub topics & messages. Looking forward to mqtt properly with this nifty as heck blaster code.

[mdhiggins]

Quick aside For the mqttdev branch, the user_id is just a prefix that gets applied to the MQTT listening subscription, so if you're not using amazon you can just put any prefix string in that field to satisfy the requirement

So for my own home-assistant setup I've been trying a number of options to get seamless integration using the media-player entity and I've found that local HTTP requests have worked better for me than MQTT. MQTT on the ESP8266 seems a bit unreliable and I've had lots of memory issues even with attempts at aggressive memory management, lots of random crashes

I'm using HTTP commands but running the mqttdev branch since this contains some general improvements all around including device states that can be strings instead of just ints

I'll share my config below to show how I've implemented things using universal media player

configuration.yaml excerpt

# REST sensor that reads if the TV is on using the device state memory of the IRController
rest:
  - scan_interval: 40
    resource: http://10.0.1.102:8083/state
    sensor:
      - name: Rest Gym TV
        value_template: "{{ value_json.states.state }}"

# Command template to send RESTFul commands to the IRController
rest_command:
  gymtv:
    url: http://10.0.1.102:8083/json?simple=1
    method: POST
    payload: "{{ payload }}"
    content_type: "application/json; charset=utf-8"

# Universal media player wrapper
media_player:
  - platform: universal
    name: Gym TV
    children:
      - media_player.gym_roku
    commands:
      turn_on:
        service: script.gym_tv_on_routine
      turn_off:
        service: script.gym_tv_off_routine
      volume_up:
        service: rest_command.gymtv
        data:
          payload: "[{data:'490',type:'SONY',length:12,out:3}]"
      volume_down:
        service: rest_command.gymtv
        data:
          payload: "[{data:'C90',type:'SONY',length:12,out:3}]"
      volume_mute:
        service: rest_command.gymtv
        data:
          payload: "[{data:'290',type:'SONY',length:12,out:3}]"
    attributes:
      state: sensor.rest_gym_tv

and here are the gym_tv_on_routine and gym_tv_off_routine

gym_tv_on_routine:
  sequence:
  - service: rest_command.gymtv
    data:
      payload: '[{type:''SONY'',data:''A90'',length:12,out:3,device:''state'',state:''on''}]'
  - service: media_player.select_source
    target:
      entity_id: media_player.gym_tv
    data:
      source: Plex - Free Movies & TV
  - service: homeassistant.update_entity
    target:
      entity_id: sensor.rest_gym_tv
  mode: single
  alias: Gym TV On Routine
gym_tv_off_routine:
  alias: Gym TV Off Routine
  sequence:
  - service: rest_command.gymtv
    data:
      payload: '[{type:''SONY'',data:''A90'',length:12,out:3,device:''state'',state:''off''}]'
  - service: media_player.media_stop
    target:
      entity_id: media_player.guest_bedroom
  - service: homeassistant.update_entity
    target:
      entity_id: sensor.rest_gym_tv
  mode: single

I'm setting the device state in the on and off commands as part of the payload and reading that back every 40 seconds as a sensor I'm trigger a sensor refresh using homeassistant.update_entity any time an on or off command is sent to make sure this is up to date The on routine also opens Plex since this is the only app I use on the roku, but this would be optional For simple commands like volume no script is needed and instead you can see I'm calling the rest_command service directly

The device media_player.gym_roku is a roku that's plugged into the gym_tv which when the TV is on will report current playback information

[hakha4]

Nice approach! but it takes a lot of code in configuration.yaml if you have many codes to send. I have my codes for all remotes in a sql lite db from before I started with HA so I have made a small java prog (B4J) that communicates via mqtt to HA and in a button where I want an ir-code to be sent I do a mqtt.publish (irblaster/'device'/'function' and then do a lookup in the database and send code as http job as before. Works very well besides that I need a program to run outside home assistant. I haven't get the hang of how to deal with states , maybe a regular check in java prog?? Probably not the most elegnt way to solve the problem but when it comes to automation in HA I'm still a newbie Cheers Håkan

[mdhiggins]

My newest trick that I'm working on to deal with states accurately is to have it read power off the TV's debug USB port which on my test hardware is working wonderfully. More on that soon

That being said, if you set your user_id to 'irblaster' it should subscribe to irblaster/devicename

[hakha4]

Do you mean that I can have Ha to read states via mqtt ?? or that I send a payload from my java prog ??

[mdhiggins]

Can certainly add code to have the device publish states to MQTT or you can have HA read the state over HTTP off the device (which is what my solution implements)

[mdhiggins]

2b7f7992d5eb203136467c82f38888010fa05423

New update includes first draft at publishing the device state to the mqtt server Not supported by the Alexa skill since that's read only so intended only for private mqtt brokers

You'll need to set const bool mqtt_publish = true; at the top in the user settings variables (defaults to false)

Should automatically publish that device states to the mqtt broker when they are changed by a command or if the USB power monitoring feature detects a change

Let me know how that works

[hakha4]

Good news! I've been busy with work last couple of days so I hadn't have a chance to test yet, but I'll get back ASAP.