How to solve warnings "it has the non-numeric value: unknown"

Configuration
,
1

I have a number of MQTT sensors that are unavailable during startup.
I use templates that provides a default value before using the sensors in a filter, but I still get these kind of warnings during start-up.

Sensor sensor.average_solar has device class power, state class measurement and unit W thus indicating it has a numeric value; however, it has the non-numeric value: unknown (<class 'str'>); Please update your configuration if your entity is manually configured, otherwise create a bug report

However I don’t see why this is, as I’m defining a default value for the sensor:

    - name: Solar_power
      state_topic: "modbus/sdm1-2/Power"
      value_template: "{{ value | int(0) }}"
      unit_of_measurement: "W"
      device_class: power
      icon: mdi:solar-power
      unique_id: Solar_power

Before using this in a filter:

- platform: filter
  name: "average solar"
  entity_id: sensor.solar_power
  filters:
    - filter: range
      lower_bound: 0
    - filter: time_simple_moving_average
      window_size: "00:03"
      precision: 0

So why is my template not working properly, providing 0 during startup, so the filter doesn’t throw the warning about receiving the string "unknown "?

2

Your solar power sensor will still be unknown until the modbus sensor is polled or restored after a restart.

I suspect you will need to open a new issue for the sensor filter integration here:

3

You could try an automation to repost the incoming MQTT message as a new topic with the retain flag set, and then have your “Solar_power” sensor use the new topic. If the MQTT integration starts before the filter during startup, it would then use the retained value, hopefully avoiding the error.

1 Like
4

Ah. I saw “modbus” and missed that this was mqtt. You’re right, a retained message should help. However it would be best to fix the filter sensor.

5

Thanks for the tips!

Ah of course, I didn’t think of the fact that if the mqtt-sensor wasn’t triggered yet, the template with the default value also wouldn’t be evaluated yet.

I was able to change the publishing of the mqtt messages with the retain flag (and checked: indeed they are now always available now on Mosquito even if no new reading are published yet).

Unfortunately this didn’t solve the warning.

It seems that the MQTT-sensors are loaded (much) later than the sensor filter integration, so it seems there is no way around this except opening this as an issue for the filter integration.

I can’t however imagine that I’m the only one having mqtt-sensors and the filter integration, thought I have not found other people mentioning these warnings.

6

I’m as well having the same type of warnings in my case with MQTT-based sensors from telegraf measurements. I had a telegraf message updating the tx and rx data rate of podman containers and when starting Home assistant I always get the following warning:

ValueError: Sensor sensor.calixto_docker_zwave_net_rx has device class data_rate, state class measurement unit kB/s and suggested precision None thus indicating it has a numeric value; however, it has the non-numeric value: unknown (<class ‘str’>)
2023-06-05 10:28:39.373 ERROR (MainThread) [homeassistant.components.mqtt.models] Exception raised when updating state of sensor.calixto_docker_zwave_net_tx, topic: ‘telegraf/Calixto/docker_container_net’ with payload: b’{“fields”:{“container_id”:“1e1ed9d0ea6f7258585e56f79899828d4332727eaa6fa98fc844e69453a91e84”,“rx_bytes”:27837036,“rx_dropped”:0,“rx_errors”:0,“rx_packets”:0,“tx_bytes”:72038708,“tx_dropped”:0,“tx_errors”:0,“tx_packets”:0},“name”:“docker_container_net”,“tags”:{“PODMAN_SYSTEMD_UNIT”:“container-zwavejs.service”,“container_image”:“docker.io/zwavejs/zwave-js-ui",“container_name”:“zwavejs”,“container_status”:“running”,“container_version”:“latest”,“engine_host”:“calixto”,“host”:“Calixto”,“io.containers.autoupdate”:“registry”,“maintainer”:“robertsLando”,“network”:“network”,“org.opencontainers.image.authors”:"Daniel Lando \[email protected]\u003e”,“org.opencontainers.image.created”:“2023-06-01T14:33:17.146Z”,“org.opencontainers.image.description”:“Full featured Z-Wave Control Panel UI and MQTT gateway. Built using Nodejs, and Vue/Vuetify”,“org.opencontainers.image.documentation”:“https://zwave-js.github.io/zwave-js-ui",“org.opencontainers.image.licenses”:“MIT”,“org.opencontainers.image.revision”:“c32f69751f7215a0908a99ae7c495e6b62cf56c5”,“org.opencontainers.image.source”:“https://github.com/zwave-js/zwave-js-ui”,“org.opencontainers.image.title”:“zwave-js-ui”,“org.opencontainers.image.url”:“https://github.com/zwave-js/zwave-js-ui”,“org.opencontainers.image.vendor”:“zwave-js”,“org.opencontainers.image.version”:“8.18.0”,“server_version”:“4.5.1”},"timestamp”:1685953711}\n’
Traceback (most recent call last):
File “/usr/src/homeassistant/homeassistant/components/sensor/init.py”, line 579, in state
numerical_value = int(value)
ValueError: invalid literal for int() with base 10: ‘unknown’

ValueError: Sensor sensor.calixto_docker_zwave_net_tx has device class data_rate, state class measurement unit kB/s and suggested precision None thus indicating it has a numeric value; however, it has the non-numeric value: unknown (<class ‘str’>)

I have enabled the persistance flag both in Mosquitto and telegraf but the message when starting HA is still there. Any hints? Thanks!