Homematic CCU Add-on and integration are a mess?

dani203 · August 29, 2021, 10:29am

Hi everyone,

i just switched from the Homematic AP to the CCU plugin using the HmIP-RF-USB Device. I switched for 3 reasons:

The AP was the last physical “bridge” in my system. I wanted to get rid of it for a cleaner installation.
I don’t see a reason why every command from HA needs to be sent through the internet first. I wanted to get rid of the Cloud aspect.
I have a HmIP-DLD (Door Lock Motor) with a remote. I wanted to integrate both into lovelace, Nodered etc. they are not supported by the HmIP Cloud Integration (Probably for security reasons).

Unfortunately it seams device integration with the CCU Plugin and the Homematic integration is even worse. I was able to add all my devices to the CCU, 5 Magnetic Window Contacts, one optical contact, 4 Radiator Thermostats, One wall thermostat, the Door lock and the remote. Also a Relay PCB. It seams like only the Window Contacts, Thermostats and the Relay PCB show up as HA entities though.
The Thermostats are available, visible but can not be controlled or even read, they only ever show 0.00°C
The groups are even worse, they are displayed as “unavailable”.
I suspect that is because Groups are supposed to be controlled through port 9292, which can not be “forwarded” in the configuration tab.
The only devices that somewhat work are the window contacts.
Nothing shows up as devices, just entities. I can’t even see the lock in HA, even though i can control it from the CCU Plugin, even though the Documentation on the HA Website states that locks are indeed supported.
(Source)
I feel like the Add-on and integration are either really outdated and neglected, or maybe i am doing something really, really wrong.
Can anybody help me find out?
Any hints would be really appreciated!

Raspberry Pi 4
Home Assistent OS core-2021.8.6
supervisor-2021.06.8
HomeMatic CCU 11.3.0

Configuration (Addon):

rf_enable: false
wired_enable: false
hmip_enable: true
rf: []
wired: []
hmip:
  - type: HMIP_CCU2
    device: /dev/ttyUSB0
regahss_reset: false

Configuration HA

homematic:
  interfaces:
    rf:
      host: core-homematic
      port: 2001
    wired:
      host: core-homematic
      port: 2000
    hmip:
      host: core-homematic
      port: 2010
    group:
      host: core-homematic
      port: 9292
      path: /groups

danielperna84 · August 29, 2021, 4:06pm

Neglected might the the correct word.

First of all, your lock is not supported. There is an old KeyMatic device, which is supported. That’s why the lock-platform is available.

The new lock however has some technical changes, which make it impossible to support with the current underlying library (pyhomematic). Other devices that are broken because of the changes eq3 made are especially cover-devices.

That’s why I started a new project to replace pyhomematic. Here I asked for help. But so far the primary response I got was “I can help testing”. But in this early stage I actually need help from someone who can code in Python to do some work. However, either HomeMatic users typically can’t code in Python, or they don’t want to. And I refuse to continue as a single maintainer. Hence there currently is no progress.

The new integration ideally would provide entities and configuration from UI. So pretty much everything you see with other modern integrations. All it takes to bring this forward would be coders who would help with the development.

Regarding your specific problems (apart from the lock):

Devices with just buttons don’t create entities, as mentioned here. So depending on your device that might be what you’re running into
Thermostats should be supported fairly well. I have not yet heard complaints of them not working at all. Only some specific feature might not be working.

So to me it seems as if it’s working. I don’t know why the thermostats don’t show valid values though. That’s not normal. And I don’t know how the group-stuff is with the add-on. I know for sure they are working when you are using a real CCU.

For some things to work you actually have to specify a valid user on the CCU (the add-on where you are paring the devices) and use that in the configuration on the HA-side. Maybe that would get some things fixed.

dani203 · August 30, 2021, 6:25pm

Hi danielperna84,

Thank you so much for your detailed reply!

I was suspecting the “Lock” aspect might be talking about the old Homematic (non-IP) lock.

I’d love to help bring a modern Homematic Integration to life, unfortunately my programming skills have never been really good (especially Python) and have also become quite rusty. I’ve done some very basic python Programming a few years back, but nothing to write home about. I am afraid i’d be of no help for you

About the Devices with Buttons, i tried listening to the “Homematic." or “homematic.keypress” events using the developer options, however absolute silence is all i get. I’ve also tried piping the Event data from "Homematic.” and “Homematic.keypress” into a debug node in Nodered to see if that works, nothing happened though, so events don’t seam to work for me for the Homematic integration.

Maybe i need to get a “real” CCU, with the AP it was working well too.

When i got all the HmIP stuff i did so because i thought it was very widely supported because there is a fairly substantial userbase. I also hoped for longer term support, since the Hardware seams to be very well engineered and made (Which is why it is not cheap). Maybe that was not the best choice for use with Home Assistent.

I try the User thing next, but honestly I don’t have much faith that this will help. I’ll keep you updated though!

Thanks again for taking the time to write a reply!

dani203 · August 30, 2021, 7:09pm

I just added another user and added that user to the configuration.yaml:

homematic:
  interfaces:
    rf:
      host: core-homematic
      port: 2001
    wired:
      host: core-homematic
      port: 2000
    hmip:
      host: core-homematic
      port: 2010
      username: "Homeassistent"
      password: "◼◼◼◼◼◼◼◼◼◼◼◼◼◼"
    group:
      host: core-homematic
      port: 9292
      path: /groups

And restarted Homeassistent via Settings → Servermanagement → Restart.
Unfortunately that only resulted in the CCU Addon entirely losing communication with all HmIP devices

I’ve had that happen last time i restarted the addon and was only able to fix it by completely reinstalling it and starting from scratch, i am not doing that again.

I have to decide now if i reconfigure my AP or spend the money on a CCU3.
This is a really aweful experience compared to everything else in the HA-Universe

danielperna84 · August 30, 2021, 8:35pm

It really shouldn’t be that horrible. I truly don’t know why it’s working so poorly for you.

Regarding the events this part of the documentation might be of interest as well.

And for the Lock have a look at the last few posts of this thread for a usable workaround.

dani203 · August 31, 2021, 6:05am

I truly appreciate your support!
I can’t imagine it being that horrible for everyone, it is really not usable for me, that is why i think i must be doing something wrong, i don’t know what though. I would like to share my Addon Logs, but i guess this is not the right section to do so, also i don’t know how to get a complete log (not the truncated one fron the UI)
i will try the workarounds in case i get the addon to work again.
Thanks again!

WallyR · October 27, 2021, 5:19am

@dani203

I use debmatic installed directly on my Pi and it seems to work great.
Its actually a CCU3 ported to work natively on a linux, so no need for the external bridge.
The question is if it will help on all your problems, since you still need to get the values into HA and that is the same as before.