Adding MQTT Sensors

Configuration
1

Hi All,

I am new to Home Assistant so please excuse any core concepts I am missing.

I installed HA on a PI using the latest available build about a few days ago.

I have a number of (Pre-existing) sensors (Mostly energy meters and temperature monitors) around my home reporting in on a variety of topics. As well as energy I am reading other elements from the meters such as Voltage, Power Factor etc.

At this time I have added the MQTT integration and added one of the topics (Frequency) via configuration added in the configuration.yaml file (Shown below)

sensor :
platform: mqtt
name : “Supply Frequency”
unique_id : “SupplyFrequency”
state_topic: “Frequency”
qos : 0
unit_of_measurement : “Hz”

At this point there is an Entity “Supply Frequency” listed, but no matching Device. Neither can I associate the entity with a specific area.

I’d like to resolve this (And understand the process) before I add the rest of the devices .

Help and suggestions much appreciated.

2

Simply adding an entity, as you did, doesn’t create a device, and an entity doesn’t need to be associated with a device to be used in scripts, automations, or the Lovelace UI. Similarly, areas are not necessary or very useful right now, so there’s no value in assigning areas to existing devices. Exposing Devices and Areas to the user is still a work-in-progress (areas showed up about a year ago, devices more recently) and your focus should be on entities & services.

3

Many thanks for the guidance Rob !