It’s been a long day but essentially I would like to utilise some component which allows me in a stable way to control my Meross devices locally and not rely on the internet or the Meross back-end.
Has someone been able to implement this at all? I can’t seem to find the IOT cloud option despite manually downloading the zip and then trying to search for it.
I’ve managed to pair all of my devices using the pairer app and the Local Meross Broker without any issues. But I’m struggling to understand what to do next to get the entities in HA. This broker in the setup points to this component : Meross HomeAssistant component which says “Just search for “Meross” (Full name is Meross Cloud IoT) in HACS” which I can’t find. The repo is already added but all I can find is “Meross LAN”.
So to a degree I have my Meross devices running locally via Meross LAN which I have setup to use Mosquitto MQTT Broker(which I had already setup for Zigbee2MQTT). With that setup when I use the Custom Pairer phone app I get the devices joined to my WiFi and then MQTT and they show up auto-discovered under Meross LAN as a new device. One thing that I did prior to moving to Meross LAN was that I had all of the devices connected via the Meross app/cloud and had assigned all of my devices static IP addresses. So it seems maybe auto-discovery just isn’t working for you. You could try also to assign fixed IP addresses. The other way to go about it is once you have “Meross LAN” installed via HACS. You should be able to go to “Settings->Devices & Integrations” then click the “Add Integration” button. Find “Meross LAN” in the listing and then choose to add it. You’ll need to enter in the IP address of the device and either you the Cloud Retrieve to get the device key or just use the “Hack mode”.
Awesome thanks. So the DHCP discovery appears to be working then when I install Meross LAN and I have several found. They’re paired locally to my Wifi using the custom pairer app and all show online in Local Meross Broker fine. As they’re no longer bound to the Meross Cloud the cloud key retrieval method doesn’t work but the hack does.
So is that it then? If they’re configured to the broker and Meross LAN discovers them and I add them using the hack, then they’re fully local and don’t need the cloud or internet?
I couldn’t for the life of me work out the “User Set” option in Meross LAN and what to put in for the key. I added the MQTT hub which allows you to set a key but that didn’t work. I even tried the key shown in the pairer app but that didn’t work either.
Hey, so that should be it, and you are managing the devices locally. I’ve had a bunch of issues with both the Customer Pairer app and Meross LAN with newer HomeKit compatible devices. I have a bunch of comments here:
Right, so I’ve blown away my config and removed everything. I’ve then paired 4 devices to the cloud and only installed Meross LAN. Those were found and I used cloud retrieve for the key.
Meross LAN then found the other 4 connected to my WiFi and I used the hack mode to retrieve their keys.
I’ll run some tests with the internet disconnected to see what I can still see/control.
Thanks for your help. Think I was confusing this with the pairer app/mqtt broker.
Yeah, the pairer app doesn’t really feel like it’s designed for direct use with Meross LAN. For clarification though Meross LAN actually uses HTTP connectivity and/or MQTT. In HTTP mode it is a polling setup, whereas MQTT is such that the Meross devices will send MQTT messages and Meross LAN will pick them up.
I couldn’t get the pairer app to play nicely and used the node scripts referenced there instead. TBH once you’ve got them setup they are much easier (and quicker) than the app.
For this method to work, you need to setup a user per Meross device in Home Assistant. The username and password to use are output by the meross-info script.
The only bit I struggled with was the final step where he talks about the ‘key’. If you have DHCP discovery enabled in Home Assistant the devices should automatically be detected. When you click ‘configure’ on them, make sure that you use ‘hack mode’ and leave the key field blank. The device should then be available.
I needed it because my mss-210 plugs wouldn’t play nicely with the standard setup - for some reason when they were connected to the cloud all the ports were closed so there was no way for Meross LAN to talk to them (via HTTP or MQTT).
Actually, one thing I found is that using the hack mode can cause update problems later. I need to put together some guidance myself on what I’ve finally gotten working, which includes using the Custom Pairer app and a suitable key.
when you set up MQTT for the plug, which port did you use? I have an MQTT broker setup in HA. I have the following setup. also, I am trying to set up MQTT with the pairer app. I didn’t find any place to use the username and pass of the broker.
@arifroni so in Custom Pairer app I added an MQTT configuration where the API Endpoint is basically not set, the User ID is the default 0, and I’ve set the MQTT Key to matching key setup in MerossLAN which originally came from the Meross Cloud. I don’t have any devices available to setup right now so I can’t get to the MQTT screen during pairing but I’m 99.9% sure that I’m using port 8883. I’m using the Mosquitto Broker as well, which it looks like that is what you are using. You also need to make sure to create users in your Home Assistant for each of your Meross devices. The username should be the MAC address and the password should be <userid>_MD5(<macaddress><key>). You can find some details about that here:
As I mentioned about the User ID in the Custom Pairer app that <userid> would be 0. The MD5 hash is created from the MAC address plus the MQTT Key. This setup works for me.
I used for now the official Meross app and meross_lan.
If I now want to decouple the devices from the cloud what should I do?
Can I just block the internet traffic?
I have set up mosquito broker , but only without ssl so far.
I tried that - and it worked quite some time - but I did not get any power consumption readings after a certain time.So just blocking might not be the answer…
sub’d… purchased 3 meross garage door openers to get around the junked up MyQ issues…
will be installing these locally (MQTT) also. more to come once they arrive.
so as the topic reads… I now understand it more.
This is a very confusing installation process to use the MQTT / Local Broker Addon / Meross Integration / Android app method
I’ve managed to get a few pieces installed and have hopes to post screenshots of the entire process (compilation of every forum/doc I have found. Was able to dust off an old android phone to get the custom pairer app installed. Tomorrow I should have my meross garage openers in (amz x3).
There will soon be an influx of more people going this route since chamberlain is giving us the shaft on 3rd party api usage.
more to come.
UPDATE:
Here is the more to come… and I apologize if this is considered hyjacking, but I was able to get to the same goal in a lot less steps. This method also worked well for me since I do not use android and my phone that I had to pull from the dead was severely out of date. I scrapped the Local Meross Broker and am able to use the default MQTT in SSL mode along with nodejs/npm/npx commands to connect to mqtt and wifi.
If you use Apple products this is the most simple way I have found to import Meross products into HA without using Meross APP or MQTT and be able to control devices without internet connection. So far my use of Meross are plugs, garage door opener and bulbs. They are all homekit compatible and I have them all running without the Meross app.
Items used during setup of Meross devices in HA
Setup Homekit - this is just for help with setting up SSID on your Meross device.
In HA install integration “HomeKit Device” not “HomeKit Bridge”
Make sure your Apple product you are using to setup Meross with is on the same SSID you want the Meross device to be on.
Steps to add Meross device to HA
From Home app on your Apple product add an accessory by clicking the + sign on top right corner in the Home app.
Scan the Homekit code on your Meross product. Make note of the code near the homekit scan code.
Select room and can just leave it as default
Now you should see the Meross product in Apple Home app and its now setup with the SSID and has wifi connection.
Now select the Meross device in Home app and remove it (if it is not removed then HA will not be able to add it)
Go to HA and open HomeKit Device integration
Click on Add Entry and it will scan the network for any compatible Homekit devices that is not joined to any Home app at that time.
You will be prompted the numeric value for the device Homekit code noted from earlier step.
Put in the homekit code number then proceed
You should get popup for the Meross device and proceed with normal HA device setup
I had also done this last August after buying my Meross MTS200 thermostat and everything went smooth. However, at some point after several months of use, the device became unresponsive over HomeKit, while working perfectly fine on the app.
The first time it happened to me, I tried several things to recover the thermostat (restarting HomeKit, restarting HA, restarting the phone, restarting the device, etc) but nothing worked, except cutting the power to area where the thermostat was installed. When back online, it started working again.
I contacted Meross Helpdesk and they blamed it on HomeKit of course. I told them the only HomeKit devices having troubles where Meross ones, but they insisted it was not their problem. They also suggested a way to reset the device without cutting power, i.e. pressing and holding up+down while the thermostat is off. I tried this the second time the issue occurred to me, and the trick allowed me to successfully recover 2 out of 3 thermostats, while the 3rd one could be recovered only by cutting power to the area.
This is quite frustrating, to the point that I’m considering giving up on HomeKit method to integrate in HA and using Meross LAN instead if the issue happens again.
Has anybody else in this group experienced a similar issue?
Can you tell me what the ‘hack mode’ is? I log into the Meross cloud and it grabs a device key. I get the Meross Lan configured but my two Meross devices show discovered but I can’t add them under Meross LAN. Everytime I try to add the device and log into the Meross cloud, I get ‘Device Key Error’ . Ughhh
