Background
I recently completed a major overhaul of my HASS setup. I took advantage of some free time to move off of hassbian to a Docker install on a standalone (pre-existing) server. That process was somewhat challenging but presented a number of opportunities. Most notably the ability to create a number of test instances to play around with without fear of harming my “main” instance.
I had seen several people discuss separating their ZWave network onto two separate instances, but I always pushed it to the side because I had everything running in hassbian and didn’t see a need. Now that I was running in Docker I decided I could test things out. Also, I’d seen some posts about zwave2mqtt so I figured I could experiment and see how things went.
Well, long story short, this was a difficult project for me. I’m not a coding expert and I found a lot of posts talking about the basics of how to separate/control two instances of HASS but not a lot of clear guidance or documentation. So I wanted to share exactly how I got it all working in case somebody else wants to try this.
The major advantage from separating my Zwave instance from the main instance is that I can now restart my main instance extremely quickly and I don’t have to wait for the Zwave network to come back online. I found this most frustrating when I was adjusting things (new scenes, sensors, etc) and would have to wait ~5 minutes between restarts. Now it’s <2 minutes and I can immediately test things.
Setup
So to start, you’ll need MQTT. I’m not going to cover setting up MQTT, there’s plenty of guides out there. To accomplish the syncing, I used MQTT Statestream. I think this part is fairly self-explanatory. You set the base_topic you want (i used homeassistant for my Zwave instance to publish to the main and homeassistant_zwave to publish from the main instance to Zwave). I excluded a bunch of entities/only included what I needed. Up to you if you want all your data streamed, I only needed certain things so that’s what I did.
You’ll also need to enable MQTT Discovery. Again, this part is fairly self explanatory, just set your discovery_prefix to whatever you want to discover.
Now comes the complicated part. To get entities set up in the main HASS instance, I was inspired by RobDYI’s post on Automating the sharing of sensors and switches between HA’s using MQTT Discovery and Statestream. Here are the automations that worked for me:
On the main instance:
- alias: "MQTT Discovery Switch Creator"
trigger:
- platform: mqtt
topic: 'homeassistant/switch/#'
condition:
condition: template
value_template: "{{ trigger.topic.split('/')[3] == 'state' }}"
action:
- service: mqtt.publish
data_template:
topic: "homeassistant/{{ trigger.topic.split('/')[1] }}/{{ trigger.topic.split('/')[2] }}/config"
payload: "{\"name\": \"{{ trigger.topic.split('/')[2]| replace('_', ' ') | title }}\", \"pl_off\":\"off\", \"pl_on\":\"on\", \"stat_t\": \"homeassistant/{{ trigger.topic.split('/')[1] }}/{{ trigger.topic.split('/')[2] }}/state\", \"cmd_t\": \"homeassistant/{{ trigger.topic.split('/')[1] }}/{{ trigger.topic.split('/')[2] }}/set\" }"
retain: true
- alias: "MQTT Discovery Light Creator"
trigger:
- platform: mqtt
topic: 'homeassistant/light/#'
condition:
condition: template
value_template: "{{ trigger.topic.split('/')[3] == 'state' }}"
action:
- service: mqtt.publish
data_template:
topic: "homeassistant/{{ trigger.topic.split('/')[1] }}/{{ trigger.topic.split('/')[2] }}/config"
payload: "{\"name\": \"{{ trigger.topic.split('/')[2]| replace('_', ' ') | title }}\", \"pl_off\":\"off\", \"pl_on\":\"on\", \"cmd_t\": \"homeassistant/{{ trigger.topic.split('/')[1] }}/{{ trigger.topic.split('/')[2] }}/set\", \"stat_t\": \"homeassistant/{{ trigger.topic.split('/')[1] }}/{{ trigger.topic.split('/')[2] }}/state\", \"bri_stat_t\": \"homeassistant/{{ trigger.topic.split('/')[1] }}/{{ trigger.topic.split('/')[2] }}/brightness\", \"bri_cmd_t\": \"homeassistant/{{ trigger.topic.split('/')[1] }}/{{ trigger.topic.split('/')[2] }}/brightness/set\" }"
retain: true
- alias: "MQTT Discovery Binary Sensor Creator"
trigger:
- platform: mqtt
topic: 'homeassistant/binary_sensor/#'
condition:
condition: template
value_template: "{{ trigger.topic.split('/')[3] == 'state' }}"
action:
- service: mqtt.publish
data_template:
topic: "homeassistant/binary_sensor/{{ trigger.topic.split('/')[2] }}/config"
payload: "{\"name\": \"{{ trigger.topic.split('/')[2]| replace('_', ' ') | title }}\", \"pl_off\":\"off\", \"pl_on\":\"on\", \"state_topic\": \"homeassistant/{{ trigger.topic.split('/')[1] }}/{{ trigger.topic.split('/')[2] }}/state\"}"
retain: true
- alias: "MQTT Discovery Sensor Creator"
trigger:
- platform: mqtt
topic: 'homeassistant/sensor/#'
condition:
condition: template
value_template: "{{ trigger.topic.split('/')[3] == 'state' }}"
action:
- service: mqtt.publish
data_template:
topic: "homeassistant/sensor/{{ trigger.topic.split('/')[2] }}/config"
payload: "{\"name\": \"{{ trigger.topic.split('/')[2]| replace('_', ' ') | title }}\", \"state_topic\": \"homeassistant/sensor/{{ trigger.topic.split('/')[2] }}/state\"}"
retain: true
And on the Zwave instance:
- alias: "MQTT Scene"
trigger:
- platform: mqtt
topic: 'homeassistant/scene/#'
condition:
condition: template
value_template: "{{ trigger.payload == 'on' }}"
action:
- service: scene.turn_on
data_template:
entity_id: "scene.{{ trigger.topic.split('/')[2] }}"
- alias: "MQTT Script"
trigger:
- platform: mqtt
topic: 'homeassistant_zwave/script/#'
action:
- service: script.turn_on
data_template:
entity_id: "{{ trigger.topic.split('/')[1] }}.{{ trigger.topic.split('/')[2] }}"
- alias: "MQTT Light and Switch Toggle"
trigger:
- platform: mqtt
topic: 'homeassistant/switch/#'
- platform: mqtt
topic: 'homeassistant/light/#'
condition:
condition: template
value_template: "{{ trigger.topic.split('/')[3] == 'set' }}"
action:
- service_template: "{{ trigger.topic.split('/')[1] }}.turn_{{trigger.payload | lower }}"
data_template:
entity_id: "{{ trigger.topic.split('/')[1] }}.{{ trigger.topic.split('/')[2] }}"
- alias: "MQTT Light Brightness"
trigger:
- platform: mqtt
topic: 'homeassistant/light/#'
condition:
- condition: template
value_template: "{{ trigger.topic.split('/')[3] == 'brightness' }}"
- condition: template
value_template: "{{ trigger.topic.split('/')[4] == 'set' }}"
action:
- service: light.turn_on
data_template:
entity_id: "{{ trigger.topic.split('/')[1] }}.{{ trigger.topic.split('/')[2] }}"
brightness: "{{trigger.payload}}"
- alias: "MQTT Cover Toggle"
trigger:
- platform: mqtt
topic: 'homeassistant/cover/#'
condition:
condition: template
value_template: "{{ trigger.topic.split('/')[3] == 'set' }}"
action:
- service_template: "cover.{{trigger.payload | lower }}_cover"
data_template:
entity_id: "{{ trigger.topic.split('/')[1] }}.{{ trigger.topic.split('/')[2] }}"
- alias: "MQTT Lock Toggle"
trigger:
- platform: mqtt
topic: 'homeassistant/lock/#'
condition:
condition: template
value_template: "{{ trigger.topic.split('/')[3] == 'set' }}"
action:
- service_template: "lock.{{trigger.payload | lower }}"
data_template:
entity_id: "{{ trigger.topic.split('/')[1] }}.{{ trigger.topic.split('/')[2] }}"
code: !secret door_code
- alias: "MQTT Input Boolean"
trigger:
- platform: mqtt
topic: 'homeassistant_zwave/input_boolean/#'
condition:
condition: template
value_template: "{{ trigger.topic.split('/')[3] == 'state' }}"
action:
- service_template: "input_boolean.turn_{{ trigger.payload | lower }}"
data_template:
entity_id: "{{ trigger.topic.split('/')[1] }}.{{ trigger.topic.split('/')[2] }}"
- alias: "MQTT Input Text"
trigger:
- platform: mqtt
topic: 'homeassistant_zwave/input_text/#'
condition:
condition: template
value_template: "{{ trigger.topic.split('/')[3] == 'state' }}"
action:
- service: input_text.set_value
data_template:
entity_id: "{{ trigger.topic.split('/')[1] }}.{{ trigger.topic.split('/')[2] }}"
value: "{{trigger.payload}}"
- alias: "MQTT Input Select"
trigger:
- platform: mqtt
topic: 'homeassistant_zwave/input_select/#'
condition:
condition: template
value_template: "{{ trigger.topic.split('/')[3] == 'state' }}"
action:
- service: input_select.select_option
data_template:
entity_id: "{{ trigger.topic.split('/')[1] }}.{{ trigger.topic.split('/')[2] }}"
option: "{{trigger.payload}}"
What this setup does is automate the creation of several entity types on the main instance. After a LOT of trial and error I found this to be the best setup. I particularly struggled with MQTT Lights as I really wanted control of power (on/off), brightness, and transition (ie how quickly to change the brightness). Transition proved to be the largest obstacle and I just couldn’t get it to work despite hours of trying. I also got things working in one way only to realize I had broken it in another way.
Eventually I decided on a work around. I moved all the scenes that relied upon transition to my Zwave instance and used MQTT to call the scene via an MQTT Publish action. I did the same with scripts, hence the two “extra” automations on the Zwave side. It’s not as clean or simple as I would have liked, but it absolutely works and works well.
Two other things that took a little bit of trial and error involved my locks and garage door. Both involved tweaking the value_template for the state of the entity. For example, to close the lock, the command was “lock” or “unlock.” However, the state reported is “locked” or “unlocked.” So to avoid any warnings/errors, I added value_template: "{{ value | replace('ed','') }}". Similarly for the garage, the states reported by the door were “open,” “opening,” “closing” and “closed” while the MQTT Cover component only supports “open” or “closed” so I would get an error with “opening” and “closing” states. The following fixed that issue:
value_template: >
{% if value == 'open' or value == 'opening' %}
open
{% else %}
closed
{% endif %}
I also ran into some issues controlling my door lock codes but that was relatively easy to get working once I got an MQTT Statestream working in reverse to send the states back to the Zwave instance.
Alternate Options
Recently, zwave2mqtt has started being developed. I looked into this option but ultimately chose not to use it, primarily because I wasn’t confident that it could handle some of the automations I had pre-existing for controlling my door lock codes and some other niche things I do. It very well may (and I think it’s a good option for some). But until it’s a little further along I think this is a better option. That’s my own opinion, take it for what it’s worth.
Conclusion
So was it all worth it? Maybe. I do enjoy being able to tweak/update things without having to take down the zwave network constantly and I think in the long term that’s going to be useful. But this project required a ton of time on my part, largely because I couldn’t find a good guide to walk me through it. Anyway, if anybody else is thinking of doing something similar I hope this helps.
I also want to thank the people who helped me in various threads while I was doing this. This really is a terrific community!
