Homeassistant -> influxdb with filter

Installation
1

I am clearly not understanding something here
I have a homeassistant docker running
I have a working influxdb running
the homeassistant is reading data from a Synology device and posting the info into influxdb. However I am posting way too much data - almost all of which I do not want. In addition the data seems spotty and seems to tail off that I am assuming (at the moment) is because I am posting too much data into influxdb

So I need / want to only include data that I want into influxdb

I tried an include section in the configuration.yaml - but I clearly have something wrong
What I tried was:

influxdb:
  api_version: 2
  ssl: false
  host: 192.168.38.189
  port: 8086
  token: yaddayaddayadda==
  organization: home
  bucket: synology
  include:
    entities:
      - backupnas_drive_1_dx517_1_temperature
      - backupnas_drive_2_dx517_1_temperature
      - backupnas_drive_3_dx517_1_temperature
      - backupnas_drive_4_dx517_1_temperature
      - backupnas_drive_5_dx517_1_temperature
      - backupnas_drive_1_temperature
      - backupnas_drive_2_temperature
      - backupnas_drive_3_temperature
      - backupnas_drive_4_temperature
      - backupnas_drive_5_temperature
      - backupnas_volume1_1_maximum_disk_temp

But homeassistant barfs at the syntax of what I have written

Looking at influxdb and data explorer

image
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Whats the correct formatting - which is clearly where I am wrong (probably) to only include the entity_id that I have selected

I don’t think I can select based on sensor, value or °C as they contain additional data that I do not want to see (AIUI) so its just the entities selected under the filter by entity_id that I want

2

Those are not entity ids. They are missing the domain in domain.object_id e.g. try:

      - sensor.backupnas_drive_1_temperature
#       ^^^^^^
4

You still have not corrected your entity ids.

  include:
    entities:
      - sensor.backupnas_drive_1_dx517_1_temperature
      - sensor.backupnas_drive_2_dx517_1_temperature
      - sensor.backupnas_drive_3_dx517_1_temperature
      - sensor.backupnas_drive_4_dx517_1_temperature
      - sensor.backupnas_drive_5_dx517_1_temperature
      - sensor.backupnas_drive_1_temperature
      - sensor.backupnas_drive_2_temperature
      - sensor.backupnas_drive_3_temperature
      - sensor.backupnas_drive_4_temperature
      - sensor.backupnas_drive_5_temperature
      - sensor.backupnas_volume1_1_maximum_disk_temp
5

Yeah - I noticed a major brain fart on my part there and deleted the post - but you got in just before I deleted the post

My apologies - I am trying again

6

Lets try again.
Its now working - but the orignal fault that I am trying to figure out is still present.
Homeassistant has been running for 1 hour. Taking readings every 5 minutes as you can see from the picture below. And when I mouse over a line there seem to be lots of data points.

image
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However if I look at influxdb using data explorer I get

image
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As you can see the readings start off present, but rapidly stop, the last one going for 30 minutes before stopping.
I was hoping that by limiting what I was writing to influxdb to a limited set of data I would solve this issue. But apparently not - the readings just stop. Restarting HA brings the readings back briefly. I even tried putting homeassistant on aa different server - which had zero effect

For example, after restarting HS, influxDB looks like:

image
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But the line is just extended from the last reading to the current, following the restart. A scatter chart may look more obvious

7

image
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As you can see the red circle was while I left HA running for a while - no readings, and the readings before just rapidly petered out whilst the bluw circle is after a reboot / restart of HA

As far as I can tell HomeAssistant just stops writing to InfluxDB

Whilst all this is going on I am logging every 5 minutes from two TrueNAS boxes, every 5 minutes for more disks than are appearing here. This has been working for some time now

8

Not sure this is the case here:
the sensors are only updated ( and trigger writing to influx) when values change and that might not be the case too often for temperatures on a Synology disk drive
Here I described what I did when I was forwarding data to influx:
InfluxDB to store data in intervals - Configuration - Home Assistant Community (home-assistant.io)
using templates sensors with an attribute based on time, forced to update every 5 minutes

Seems I was using the old style to define the template sensors, I stopped forwarding data to influx quite a while ago, it was working, but I never really looked at the old data
you likely have to rewrite that to the new style.

Armin

9

Hmmm, I did wonder - but had no evidence.
I have started a scrub on the synology, which should warm the disks up and will see what happens

10

I think you are right - its only sending data when the values change - not what I am looking for as the charts look really crap
@armin-gh I looked at what you posted - but I am afraid that just went woosh, straight over my head

11

That is exactly what Home Assistant does.

If you want the graph to be continuous you have to set them to “fill last value”. Easy to do in Grafana, not sure about influxdb’s charts.

12

we can try in smaller steps. You can put this into your configuration.yaml

if you do not have already other templates ( “template:” in Column 1) in your configuration, add this:
if you already have templates, add it under the last already existing template

template:
  - sensor:
      - name: "BackupNAS Drive 1 Temperature Influx"
        unique_id: backupnas_drive_1_temperature_influx
        unit_of_measurement: "°C"
        state: "{{ states('sensor.backupnas_drive_1_temperature') }}"
        device_class: temperature
        attributes:
          update_now: "{{ (now().minute / 5) | round(0) }}"

this adds a new sensor with id “sensor.backupnas_drive_1_temperature_influx”. It duplicates your existing sensor but because of the attribute “update_now” it updates every 5 minutes.
Then add “sensor.backupnas_drive_1_temperature_influx” to your entities going to Influx. now you should see new data there every 5 minutes.

Also wanted to mention that the disadvantage of this method is that you have to create a new template sensor for every entity you want to have in Influx… might become a large list. I would do that only for selected entities, where long term statistics in Influx have a real value.

Armin

13

Seems to me this is pretty tedious to do for each sensor, coming from Openhabian their persistence for Influxdb was a bit simpler; add a sensor to a group, decide interval/strategy (cron, change).
BTW you can also decide for each sensor it’s strategy.

Strategies 
{
    everyMinute : "0 * * * * ?"
    every5min   : "0 0/5 * * * ?"
    every15min  : "0 0/15 * * * ?"    
    everyHour   : "0 0 * * * ?"
    everyDay    : "0 0 0 * * ?"
}
Items
{
    gTEMP*                              : strategy = everyHour
    gHUM*                               : strategy = everyChange, everyHour
}

I have just started with HA and still struggling with the best Influxdb integration.
Maybe working with a (short) retention on the influxdb side is much easier?

14

I think it starts with carefully selecting which sensors/entities you really need with long term statistics and/or for visualisation for example in Grafana.
I have thermostats, lights, temperature, door/window-contact, humidity, … I meanwhile stopped storing to Influx, because I do not really need to know that temperature in my office was 20.1°C on a Sunday 6 months ago, but 19.8°C at the same time two weeks later… of course exaggerating a bit here…
I do not have photovoltaic, heatpumps or similar devices, energy produced or consumed would definitly be something I would store in a long term database ( and not to rely on data stored in the manufactures cloud )

But I agree also that influx-integration in HA would deserve better configuration, perhaps with yaml for the expert, but a list of entities in a GUI-configuration where I can select the entities I want to store and the measurement they should be stored in… would be nice…

Armin

15

Just to necro this post. I solved the issue by (and I know I am speak heresy here) bypassing HA. Instead I wrote a script that runs on the synology and post the disks temps directly to InfluxDB every five minutes. I can then graph this in Graphana. Its a bit of a hack and requires modification (kinda obvious how) if moved to a different synology and only (currently) works with HDD’s as SSD’s report temp using different details that I am not searching for. But:

  1. I have no SSD’s in the Synology
  2. I don’t care about SSD temps - they thermally throttle

Thank you all