Home Assistant Add-on: rtl_433 with MQTT auto discovery

ideal2545 · July 5, 2021, 8:54am

Would it be possible to add support for autodiscovery of the GS-WDS07 contact sensor (on/off) and battery (on/off)? It’s arguably the most popular 433 contact sensor.

Protocol 30 seems to pick it up relatively easily but I also see in the example conf file from your docs that there is this section:

# # Golden Security GS-WDS07 door and window sensor
# #  short is 476 us + 1344 us
# #  long is 1364 us + 448 us
# #  packet gap 13972 us
# #decoder n=gswds07,m=OOK_PWM,s=476,l=1364,r=15000,g=1600,bits>=24,bits<=25,invert

Pretty cool if you could!

Jon

P.S. As an RTL_433 newb moving from Sonoffs RF_Bridge the rtl_433 wrapper and the autodiscovery you have here is fundamentally amazing!!

allmyhinges · July 7, 2021, 1:56am

Thanks for filing a feature request on Github Feature Request: Contact sensors like GS-WDS07 · Issue #15 · pbkhrv/rtl_433-hass-addons · GitHub. Let’s continue this conversation there.

Eriond · August 5, 2021, 12:00am

Excellent add-on, thank you.
During installation I noticed a minor issue, not sure if it relates to the base RTL433 code and probably not worth making a proper issue of:
My standard mqtt_user’s password contains some “special” characters such as # and @. For some reason that caused the MQTT login to be rejected (error code 5). Once I created another HA user to use with rtl_433, with a more “friendly” password, everything works as it’s supposed to.

Judman13 · September 3, 2021, 8:43pm

Hey all,

@allmyhinges

Wondering if I could get some help here. I am running Supervised in Proxmox and have a NooElec NESDR Mini 2 passed through to HA. I installed the rtl_433 add-on and the following config:

device        0
gain          0
frequency     433.92M
hop_interval  600
ppm_error     0
sample_rate   250k
report_meta level
report_meta noise
report_meta stats
report_meta time:usec
report_meta protocol
output json
output mqtt://192.168.1.244:1883,user=rtl_433,pass=HArtl433,events=rtl_433[/model][/id]
convert customary
stop_after_successful_events false

I mostly just took out the fluff from the example config and added my MQTT info.

Mosquitto broker is installed without logins and I can use MQTT explorer to see the MQTT messages coming through from my acurite sensor and the occasional TMPS driving by.

{"time":"2021-09-03 15:36:48.873488","protocol":40,"model":"Acurite-5n1","message_type":49,"id":754,"channel":"A","sequence_num":2,"battery_ok":0,"wind_avg_mi_h":0,"wind_dir_deg":247.5,"rain_in":0.06,"mic":"CHECKSUM"}

Now what I am struggling with is using the auto-discover to pull that into home assistant.
This is my auto-discover config:

mqtt_host: 192.168.1.244
mqtt_port: 1883
mqtt_user: rtl_433
mqtt_password: HArtl433
mrtt_retain: checked
rtl_topic: rtl_433
discovery_prefix: homeassistant
discovery_interval: 60

Here is the auto-discover log:

[s6-init] making user provided files available at /var/run/s6/etc...exited 0.
[s6-init] ensuring user provided files have correct perms...exited 0.
[fix-attrs.d] applying ownership & permissions fixes...
[fix-attrs.d] done.
[cont-init.d] executing container initialization scripts...
[cont-init.d] done.
[services.d] starting services
[services.d] done.
Starting rtl_433_mqtt_hass.py...

I have read through the Home Assistant mqtt discovery doc, but at this point I am kind of lost as to what is supposed to happen next.

What am I missing?

allmyhinges · September 7, 2021, 2:57pm

To check whether the auto-discover script is working, please check MQTT explorer - you should see topics under homeassistant/sensor/ with names related to Acurite. Here’s what that looks like on my install:

hass-auto-discovery-mqtt

What are you seeing on your end?

Judman13 · September 7, 2021, 3:12pm

All my MQTT messages are under rtl_433, which I believe is the rtl_433 add on.

allmyhinges · September 7, 2021, 3:40pm

Your auto-discovery add-on config lists discover_interval, but it should be discovery_interval - can you please double-check the config again?

As for how auto-discovery works:

The rtl_433 add-on posts messages under the “rtl_433” topic, like in your screenshot.

The auto-discovery add-on reads those messages from the rtl_433/* topics and posts special MQTT auto-discovery messages under “homeassistant” topic (those are controlled by the auto-discovery add-on config values “rtl_topic” and “discovery_prefix” respectively).

Judman13 · September 7, 2021, 4:03pm

That was just a typo from me typing out the config instead of a screenshot. Here is the Auto Discovery configuration.

Do I need to add /* to the rtl_topic?

allmyhinges · September 7, 2021, 4:40pm

The default value for rtl_topic is rtl_433/+/events set yours to this and restart.

Judman13 · September 7, 2021, 5:44pm

Done. I waited an hour and I am not seeing any homeassistant messages in mqtt explorer, but the rtl_433 messages keep updating.

allmyhinges · September 7, 2021, 5:57pm

Seeing anything useful in the auto discover addon log?

Judman13 · September 7, 2021, 6:07pm

I do not and I refreshed before the screenshot.

allmyhinges · September 7, 2021, 6:17pm

Ah… i think this part of your rtl_433 config is the issue. Please remove the events=... part from the output key in your rtl_433.conf - rtl_433 will use a sensible default that the auto-discovery add-on understands.

Judman13 · September 7, 2021, 6:36pm

That did it immediately! Guess that’s what I get for following instructions in other treads without fully understanding MQTT.

Judman13 · September 7, 2021, 6:47pm

One more thing.

Rain Total is coming into rtl in inches, but being converted to mm in the auto discover script. How can that be changed?

allmyhinges · September 7, 2021, 7:08pm

The conversion is hard-coded into the auto-discovery script unfortunately with no easy way of adding an option to avoid it. As a workaround, you could create a template sensor in HA that would take the mm value and covert it back into inches - it would be a new “sensor” in HA that derives its value from the one being reported by rtl_433. There might also be a setting in HA somewhere to show everything in inches instead of mm? not sure, sorry.

Judman13 · September 7, 2021, 7:14pm

Interesting that it forces conversion. I don’t think there is a HA setting since HA just takes whatever is fed into it.

Appreciate the help!

IOT_Ninja · September 7, 2021, 8:10pm

There is a HA setting under Configuration → General that will force-convert temperature, at least for stuff displayed in the Lovelace dashboard. When I first started with HA, I remember this being a point of contention for me when trying to display HVAC temperatures in F, and computer/server monitoring temperatures in C.

Judman13 · September 7, 2021, 8:38pm

Yeah I already have that set to Imperial, being in the US. This is a problem because it taking a measurement from inches to mm and logging the data in mm. So all future rain data will be logged in mm.

I did what allmyhinges said and just made a separate sensor that pulls the data instead of relying on the auto-discoved one.

brunkj · September 9, 2021, 5:47pm

Is the docker itself available somewhere. I do not run HA in a fashion where supervisor is available. So I would like to run this separate.