How to read inputs/buttons?

[Ben-Kaniobi]

According to the Readme, inputs are supported. However I can only find entities for outputs, the LED, temperature sensor and motion sensor.

Do I have to configure something in the Dingz webinterface first?

[Vali6053]

I have the problem that it only shows me the sensors entities such as brightness and temperature. The outputs such as lamps are not displayed to me.

[Ben-Kaniobi]

@Vali6053 what version of the Dingz Firmware are you using? After updating from v1.x.x to v2.0.21 most (or all?) entities aren't available anymore for me either...

[Vali6053]

My version is the v2.0.21.

[siku2]

@Ben-Kaniobi, @Vali6053, I finally got some time to update (actually, more like "rewrite") this integration. Please give the new version a shot and let me know how it goes. The best time to fix things and add features is right now, while I still have time.

[Ben-Kaniobi]

@siku2 v0.4.2 works great! I can finally use Dingz again and it integrates much more nicely. Thanks for your work!

As for the inputs/buttons, I still can't find entries in the Dingz devices in HASS.

• In the Dingz App, I have one button named to "Bla" and have no action set (is this the problem?)
• In the web interface I can set more options for that button, but am not sure what to use if I only want it to trigger an automation in HASS (probably "Virtual" as it does not control any local light/thermostat)
• I tried a few settings and restarted HASS, but the Dingz device did not list a new entity

Can you give me some pointers how to get it working please?

[siku2]

@Ben-Kaniobi, the buttons should be present as "Event" entities, but they only work if the dingz can communicate with HA via MQTT. They don't even appear as entities unless MQTT is enabled.

The action shouldn"t matter.

[Ben-Kaniobi]

@siku2 Ah I see, I don't use MQTT yet, thanks for the clarification.

I was confused because my interpretation of the README was that buttons work even without MQTT, except for live updates:

• Button press events (incl. live updates when used in combination with MQTT)

I guess this issue can be closed then 😅

[siku2]

Just saw that as well, will update this to avoid confusion. I'm also writing a guide on how to enable MQTT to make this process easier (should be done in a few minutes).

There is another option to enable this functionality through the "webhook" capabilities of the dingz, but I opted against implementing this as well, because MQTT is the superior approach for this sort of thing. If you have a reason why you don't want to use MQTT, I'm happy to evaluate the other option as well.

[siku2]

@Ben-Kaniobi , I will mark this issue as closed, but please let me know how it goes once you set up the MQTT connection.

[Ben-Kaniobi]

@siku2 All right, I finally got around in enabling MQTT.

I set up the MQTT broker in docker on my NAS, not via the Home Assistant AddOn. I am running Home Assistant on a Raspberry Pi without SSD/HDD but SDCard only, so I'm trying to avoid anything that constantly writes to the drive there. For setting up the broker in docker and connecting to Home Assistant, I used this guide. However it seems that the guide mixes up /mosquitto and /opt/mosquitto (?), so I used the former one everywhere and ignored the opt directory.

After that I followed the rest of your guide. Here are my notes regarding that:

• The Dingz were able to resolve the hostname of my NAS, I didn't need to use the IP address.
• The MQTT URI might also use the port number (I guess this even is required when not using the default port 1883)
• The MQTT Diagnostic didn't change to Connected before reloading the device. After reloading, I worked and from then on always showed the current state immediatly (e.g. switched to Disconnected when changing the URI to something invalid, and switched back to Connected when correcting the URI again).
• It took me a short while to figure out how to use the new button events as triggers for an automation:
  • Using a Manual event trigger with event.dingzname_buttonname didn't work (maybe I had a typo, but more likely that's for something else)
  • Using a State trigger with the dingz button event for the Entity, Event type for the Attribute and p for the To, it worked.
    The attribute values seem to be as follow:
  • p: pushed down
  • r: released
  • mX: pressed X times
  • h: (I have no idea, I didn't see this one, maybe it stands for "held down" and only shows up depending on how the button is configured in the dingz webinterface??)
  • → So, on a normal button press I would see p, followed by r and then m1.