Enable or disable custom sensor polling programatically

ESPHome
1

Hello,

I am converting a Ikea manual adjustable hight desk to an electric one. In short i’m controlling a motor with a relay and using a VL53L1X as height sensor, to both sense when the end stops are reached but also to be able to store positions.

The distance sensor is read by a custom sensor called like this in ESPHome.

sensor:
  - platform: custom
    lambda: |-
      auto my_VL53L1X_sensor = new VL53L1XCustomSensor();
      my_VL53L1X_sensor->set_update_interval(100); // define update interval
      App.register_component(my_VL53L1X_sensor);
      return {my_VL53L1X_sensor};
    sensors:
      id: height_sensor
      name: "Distance"
      accuracy_decimals: 0
      unit_of_measurement: "mm"
      internal: true

I feel like its unneccesary for the sensor to keep polling at 100ms perodicity when the desk is not moving. So I was wondering if anyone has an idea on what I can do to only poll the sensor value when the motor is engaged?

2

How come you’re not just using the native component?

You can try to get the hardware standby working.

I could get it to shut down but not wake up again.

You could also check if you could power it via a gpio pin and user that as a switch (I think you can do that but not 100%).

I would also be planning for the situation when the tof fails/is unresponsive… I’ve had that happen with these sensors a little. Either add extra endstops, max timeouts, or only move if recent distance received etc.

3

Thanks, I tried that component but it does not seem to work for VL53L1X. I can get the sensor to go to sleep. My question was more how to stop the ESP function to stop polling for data.

1 Like
4

Right yes I see now.

I don’t really know.

I do know that you can set updates to “never” and just call them manually, so maybe you could do something with that? I don’t know if it’s relevant for your component though.

I do it here.

5

Thanks I’ll check it out.