I have a working MQTT switch and separate non-MQTT binary sensor that I’m trying to combine into the cover component with no success.
The goal would be to get the open / close status from the binary sensor. When it’s off the door is closed and when on the door is open. Otherwise the MQTT switch seems to be working just fine.
I’ve tried the following with it always showing an unknown status:
Could you describe your goal with more details?
For example, how exactly do you see your combined a MQTT switch and a template binary sensor into another component?
and it would be great to see what mqtt messages are in the broker log when the door opens/closes and same for button.
I’m not familiar with covers but your code seems strange at least because
a) it’s almost identical for both sections (cover and switch?)
b) there’s no payload_open/close in mqtt switch afaik
c) your last value_template won’t work because for binary_sensor it should return True or False, not state
You need to choose one of those two templates and set the state_on and state_off topics to use the same states. For example, if you choose to use the first template, add these lines to the cover’s configuration: state_on: “on” state_off: “off”
So it doesn’t looks like there is a state_on or off for the MQTT cover. I am wondering through if what I should do is configure the ESP MQTT nodes as a MQTT switch first. And then try to combine the MQTT switch and binary sensor into one cover template?
I think the challenge comes from the fact that Home Assist is expecting to get this value via the MQTT state / position_topic. Which in my case it won’t because the binary sensor is not an MQTT device. Here’s my current config.
I thought it might be worth trying but I agree with you, the component is waiting for a payload to arrive via the state_topic before it applies the value_template.
An easy workaround is to use a simple automation to make binary_sensor.alarm_monitor_0_13 publish its state to an MQTT topic (such as right-garage/status).
Today’s your lucky day. Here’s a single automation that can handle all three binary_sensors.
- alias: 'MQTT Garage Publish'
hide_entity: true
trigger:
platform: state
entity_id: binary_sensor.alarm_monitor_0_13, binary_sensor.alarm_monitor_0_18, binary_sensor.alarm_monitor_0_19
action:
service: mqtt.publish
data_template:
topic: >-
{% set topics = {"13":'right', "18":'left', "19":'center'} %}
{% set door = trigger.to_state.object_id[-2:] %}
{{ topics[door] if door in topics.keys() else 'unknown' }}/status
payload: "{{ 'open' if trigger.to_state.state == 'on' else 'closed' }}"
retain: true
How it works:
It triggers if any one of the three binary_sensors changes state.
It defines a dictionary called topics where the key is the last two characters of the binary_sensor’s name (13, 18, 19) and the value is the door’s name (right, left, center).
It extracts the last two characters from the name of whichever binary sensor triggered the automation and assigns it to the door variable.
To create the topic, it uses the dictionary to find the door’s name then appends /status.
EDIT
I added retain: true to the automation. This will cause the states of the binary_sensors to be retained (stored) by the broker. That means when Home Assistant restarts it will re-subscribe to the broker and immediately receive the last known state of each binary sensor. In other words, it duplicates the functionality of the automation you created to run on startup. Therefore the four automations you currently have can be reduced to just one ‘do it all’ automation.
NOTE
You will initially need to open/close each door once so that the automation is triggered and publishes the retained state of each door.
@rsaturns I wanted to thank you for posting your complete, final code. This worked perfectly with my Sonoff/Espurna setup. Thanks again for the clarity and following up with your solution.
