Home Assitant - Device Registration MQTT Addon Broken broken?

[FloatingBoater (James Derrick)]

Hi,
Let’s unravel what is going on here:

1. You are writing client device code in Python, which connects to a MQTT broker via the paho.mqtt.client. (I had to go to the Github page.)
2. You are using HASS Discovery, so by publishing specific topics to the MQTT broker, HASS creates entities automatically.
3. There seems to be a loop which registers two devices, twice.
4. The second loop iteration does not register +2 devices.

As I’m not keen to read and understand many lines of Python, my advice is to break this down.

What I did when writing a complex client device in Python using the same Paho libraries and HASS Discovery, was to create a test rig on the command line. This allows FAST and IMMEDIATE testing.

Prototype what you want in a script on the command line, check it instantly configures HASS, and THEN write code. You’ll find misunderstandings in the discovery paylods much faster.

Here’s an explanation and example:

MQTT Discovery pending

Hi, After writing a Python device using HASS Discovery, I found HASS changes configuration state almost immediately after I published the discovery topics to the broker. This made manual testing of the structure straightforward as the debug cycle was basically: Delete the previous retained topics using MQTT Explorer Publish new discovery data with mosquitto_pub on the command line See what happened in HASS immediately Cross-check what the broker actually published using https://mqtt-explorer…

Note that entity naming changed slightly in 2023.8, which impacts HASS Discovery naming;

PSA: MQTT Name changes in 2023.8

Presumably, whilst the state entity was being added the devs worked on the entity naming code, updated the integration API and Entity Naming Standards and found the existing MQTT integration result gave “Device Name Device Name” as they code now concatenates Device Name and Entity Name which were often set to the same value by MQTT device developers. These fields were only loosely documented in the HASS MQTT Discovery documentation, so now every developer using the spec needs to update their co…

The Mosquitto broker log only shows the client MQTT connections coming and going - not what the MQTT integration is doing with the payloads as it interprets HASS Discovery.

I’d suggest MQTT Explorer to dump the actual HASS Discovery payload topics so we can interpret what is going on.

If this helps, this post!