Custom Sensor - Issues

Configuration
1

Hi there

Im experiencing a few issues with getting a custom sensor to work properly with Hass.

The hardware setup: Rpi (HASS) <—Restful API— RPi (OSMC)

  1. Main Raspberry Pi setup with HASS, this is where I want to have all the sensor data.
  2. Another Raspberry Pi (primarily as a media center) with 1-wire sensor(DS18b20).
  3. Data is pushed from RPi (OSMC) to RPi Hass via Restful API (python code)

On the Hass, I have created a custom sensor using example from:
https://home-assistant.io/developers/platform_example_sensor/

Modded the example a bit example.py:

from homeassistant.const import TEMP_CELSIUS
from homeassistant.helpers.entity import Entity
from homeassistant.helpers import config_validation as cv
import voluptuous as vol
from homeassistant.components.sensor import PLATFORM_SCHEMA
from homeassistant.const import CONF_NAME
import logging

_LOGGER = logging.getLogger(__name__)

DOMAIN = 'example_sensor'

DEFAULT_NAME = 'Example Sensor'


PLATFORM_SCHEMA = PLATFORM_SCHEMA.extend({
    vol.Optional(CONF_NAME, default=DEFAULT_NAME): cv.string
})


def setup_platform(hass, config, add_devices, discovery_info=None):
    """Setup the sensor platform."""
    add_devices([ExampleSensor(config[DOMAIN].get(CONF_NAME, DEFAULT_NAME))])


class ExampleSensor(Entity):
    """Representation of a Sensor."""

    def __init__(self,name):
        """Initialize the sensor."""
        self._state = None
        self._name = name

    @property
    def name(self):
        """Return the name of the sensor."""
        return 'Example Temperature'

    @property
    def state(self):
        """Return the state of the sensor."""
        return self._state

    @property
    def unit_of_measurement(self):
        """Return the unit of measurement."""
        return TEMP_CELSIUS

#    def update(self):
#        """Fetch new state data for the sensor.
#
#        This is the only method that should fetch new data for Home Assistant.
#        """
#        self._state = 23

I have removed the update function as I dont want Hass to fetch the data. Im pushing the data from the other RPi(OSMC) to Hass.

For the HASS configuration (sensors.yaml):

- platform: example
  name: OLED Test

Im trying to pass the Name which I wish to show for the sensor in the Hass UI. The sensor does show up in HASS, but the name is not reflected.

On the Hass UI, I was hoping that the senor data would be shown as a graph, but it shows up as below(bits?), which is not really useful:

image

On the other RPi (media center), I have the below code to push data to HASS via the Restful API:

def post_hass(temperature):
    url = 'http://192.168.0.14:8123/api/'
    endpoint = "states/sensor.example_temperature" ##this is entity_id
    payload={'state': temperature}
    headers = {'x-ha-access': 'password', 'content-type': 'application/json'}
    response = post(url+endpoint, headers=headers, json=payload)
    if (response.status_code != 200):
        print("HASS Publish Failed".upper())
        print(json.dumps(json.loads(response.text), indent=2))

Is there something that Im doing incorrectly? (i bet i am :stuck_out_tongue: )

So the issues i have:

  1. The Name on the Hass UI is incorrectly shown
  2. The sensor data is not shown as a graph

Any help would greatly be appreciated.

2

The multi-band means HA is getting a bunch of text states instead of float values?

print(json.dumps(json.loads(float(response.text)), indent=2))

I’ve no idea if the above will work, but worth a go.

3

The print statement is only if there is an error submitting data to HASS.

4

I’m not familiar with going this route, but in normal HA, the graphs are based on the unit_of_measure. So that unit of measure property might be the cause. What does TEMP_CELSIUS return?

Yes, just as bit-river said too, Your dictionary from the payload may treat the temperature as a string.

this may help:

def state(self):
    """Return the state of the sensor."""
    try:
        x = float(self._state)
    except ValueError:
        x = 0.
    return x