MQTT Client setup

vitalikkh · May 13, 2023, 6:01pm

Hi Everyone.

I am very new to Home Assistant and what is worse - my knowledge in software area is very limited.
So, I will need more detailed instructions vs. just a generic statements.
I am trying to create a control for my Smart Beds (Reverie 5d).
It could be possible to achieve by using MQTT Client (Reverie was kind enough to send me a
confidential info how to control beds with MQTT Commands).
My good guess - first step is to setup MQTT Client talking to their MQTT Broker (cloud?).
I already have installed Mosquitto MQTT Broker and using it very successfully for ESPresence
BT Beacons.

Please help me to setup MQTT Client.
Since info I got is CONFIDENTIAL unfortunately I will not be able to provide a details.
But in short there is a MQTT Topic in format : name/DeviceID
and a payload commands in JSON format.
Any help and hints are greatly appreciated.

Thank you in advance,

Vitaliy

templeton_nash · May 13, 2023, 6:45pm

Hi @vitalikkh

Home Assistant is a MQTT client. You can do a Call Service to MQTT.Publish to send an instruction via a broker (Mosquito) to your bed.

Whilst you will eventually add the Call Service action to an automation, it’s often better to start in Home Assistant’s Developer Tools > SERVICES.

Enter MQTT.Publish and you should get a few fields to fill in.

Without seeing the confidential info I can’t say what to enter.

Have a look at MQTT in the Home Assistant documentation.

Of course, I’m assuming that you have given your bed details of the MQTT broker.

vitalikkh · May 13, 2023, 8:19pm

As of now they sent me a pdf file which describes all possible commands for the Payload field.
All these commands are in JSON format. And doc has few example commands.
I guess, for the Payload field I am kind of all set.

But for how to access their MQTT broker all what I have is a MQTT Topic which is:
name/DeviceID
where name is (I assume) name is a subfolder (or so) and DeviceID is an ID for my bed.
So far they did not say what is an IP address and Port Number.
I asked this question and I hope they will provide this info on Monday.
(If they said A they should say B as well.)
I guess, for the user name and password I should use whatever I use for their app.
But say I know the IP and Port number.
Where should I enter them in the MQTT Publish a packet field?

I assume it should be in the Topic field. But format is?
Should it be something like:
IP_Address:Port_Number name/DeviceID
or something different?
Could you please advice me?

And of course, after I will be able to control my bed next steps will be to add automations.

templeton_nash · May 13, 2023, 8:25pm

Hi @vitalikkh

I’m not sure how to advise you as my experience of MQTT is limited to Home Assistant’s native Mosquito broker.

Hopefully someone else can help.

nickrout · May 14, 2023, 9:48am

You can only link to one mqtt broker in home assistant. Therefore if you are already usung mosquitto, you can’t directly connect HA to the external broker.

You can however use you mosquitto broker to connect to the external broker. Use bridging

vitalikkh · May 14, 2023, 4:23pm

Thank you for the info on bridging MQTT brokers. This bridging may do the trick.
But where do I enter the configuration shown below for the MQTT Broker on HA?

jayjay · May 15, 2023, 12:19am

JSON data from my frontdoor should be your smart bed

Sensors	
0	
TaskName	"BME280"
Temperature	11.24
1	
TaskName	"PIR_VD"
Switch	0
2	
TaskName	"Drukknop"
Switch	0
3	
TaskName	"relais"
Switch	0

-------------------------------------

MQTT sensor and switch examples
This if you do not get auto discover

-------------------------------------

Temperature sensor example

# mqtt_sensors:
- name: "t_frontdoor"
  unique_id: '##########'
  state_topic: frontdoor/BME280/Temperature
  unit_of_measurement: °C
  device_class: temperature
  value_template: "{{value_json}}"

----------------------------------

binary switch

-   name: pir_door
    unique_id: '#########'
    state_topic: "frontdoor/PIR_VD/Switch"
    payload_on: "1"
    payload_off: "0"
    device_class: motion
    # value_template: "{{value_json.x}}"

switch, relais in this case
---------------------------------------------
# mqtt switch:

-   name: light forntdoor
    unique_id: '#########'
    state_topic: "frontdoor/relais/Switch"
    command_topic: "frontdoor/gpio/12"
    payload_on: "1"
    payload_off: "0"
    optimistic: false
    qos: 0
    retain: true
--------------------------------------------

Hope this points a bit in the right direction for you, make sure that your MQTT broker is entered in the bed, the URL and the correct Password else nothing works.

Hope this helps a bit, good luck.

vitalikkh · May 15, 2023, 9:03pm

@nickrout

I am really sorry (I am not a SW person) but I still cannot understand how to bridge my
HA Mosquitto MQTT Broker with the external (I guess, Amazon) MQTT Broker.
This is an info how to connect to the the external MQTT Broker (I am not sure if this is enough):
AWS endpoint MQTT over TLS : a2k32ezw8t07q7-ats.iot.us-east-1.amazonaws.com:8883

Could you please provide me a detailed example how to bridge HA MQTT Broker with this
Amazon MQTT Broker?
Also I need to know which HA Configuration file must contain a MQTT Bridging entries?

Thank you,

Vitaliy

nickrout · May 16, 2023, 6:42am

The forum does have a search function

vitalikkh · May 19, 2023, 5:18pm

@nickrout @chrisjcbt

Yes, and I am using forum search, google search, etc …
I did learn a lot but still cannot get MQTT bridging working.

First of all - my HA installation came preloaded on ODROID N2+ hardware.
I am not 100% sure but I think this is Supervised HA installation. Am I right?

Second - I got a lot of info from Reverie tech support on how to configure MQTT.
I tested the connection with MQTT Explorer very successfully. So the provided info is correct and
sufficient for the establishing a successful connection to the AWS IoT MQTT Broker.

They also send me an info how to configure Mosquitto MQTT Broker:

log_dest stdout
log_type error
log_type warning
log_type notice
log_type information

connection awsiot
address XXXXXXXXXXXXXX.amazonaws.com:8883
topic # out
start_type automatic
try_private false
bridge_cafile /ssl/Amazon_AWS/XXX_CA.pem
bridge_certfile /ssl/Amazon_AWS/XXX_certificate.pem.crt
bridge_keyfile /ssl/Amazon_AWS/XXX_private.pem.key

My understanding is: the above configuration should be entered in the mosquitto.conf file
and file should be in the /share/mosquitto location.
I created a mosquitto folder ander /share and created a mosquitto.conf file with all the above entries.
Also I created a Amazon_AWS folder inder /ssl and pasted all 3 certificate related files into this folder.

I restarted MQTT Broker few times and even rebooted few times the HA.
But to my eyes the Mosquetto MQTT Broker does not use all my updated configurations.

Just in case, here is a Mosquuetto MQTT Broker log after rebooting the HA:

s6-rc: info: service s6rc-oneshot-runner: starting
s6-rc: info: service s6rc-oneshot-runner successfully started
s6-rc: info: service fix-attrs: starting
s6-rc: info: service fix-attrs successfully started
s6-rc: info: service legacy-cont-init: starting
cont-init: info: running /etc/cont-init.d/mosquitto.sh
[12:33:19] INFO: SSL is not enabled
cont-init: info: /etc/cont-init.d/mosquitto.sh exited 0
cont-init: info: running /etc/cont-init.d/nginx.sh
cont-init: info: /etc/cont-init.d/nginx.sh exited 0
s6-rc: info: service legacy-cont-init successfully started
s6-rc: info: service legacy-services: starting
services-up: info: copying legacy longrun mosquitto (no readiness notification)
services-up: info: copying legacy longrun nginx (no readiness notification)
[12:33:20] INFO: Starting NGINX for authentication handling…
s6-rc: info: service legacy-services successfully started
[12:33:20] INFO: Starting mosquitto MQTT broker…
2023-05-19 12:33:21: Warning: Mosquitto should not be run as root/administrator.
[12:33:22] INFO: Successfully send discovery information to Home Assistant.
[12:33:22] INFO: Successfully send service information to the Supervisor.

Please advice what I am missing and how to get it working.

Thank you,

Vitaliy

UPDATE

OK, I changed customization option to true:

customize:
active: true
folder: mosquitto

Now log said configuration was red:

[14:48:17] INFO: Starting mosquitto MQTT broker…
1684522097: Loading config file /share/mosquitto/mosquitto.conf

but bridge still is not working. At least I don’t see any evidence.

UPDATE 2

I enabled all logging (added log_type all to the conf file) and i can see some log entries
related to the attempted connection to the AWS IoT MQTT:

2023-05-19 18:48:52: Bridge local.HomeAssistant doing local SUBSCRIBE on topic #
2023-05-19 18:48:52: Connecting bridge awsiot (xxxxxxxxx-ats.iot.us-east-1.amazonaws.com:8883)
2023-05-19 18:48:52: Bridge HomeAssistant sending CONNECT
2023-05-19 18:48:52: mosquitto version 2.0.15 running
2023-05-19 18:48:52: New connection from 127.0.0.1:44288 on port 1883.
2023-05-19 18:48:52: Client closed its connection.
2023-05-19 18:48:52: Client local.HomeAssistant closed its connection.

If I am not mistaken local Mosquitto MQTT Broker closes the connection.

What is wrong in my configuration?

francisp · May 20, 2023, 6:37am

This is Supervisor checking the Mosquitto add-on, and is normal behaviour. Nothing to do with your bridge.

vitalikkh · May 20, 2023, 11:55am

Well, bridge is not working.
Obviously something is wrong but I cannot figure out what exactly.
Any ideas what to check or try are very welcome.

vitalikkh · May 20, 2023, 4:22pm

MQTT Experts,
Please advice.

I am desperately trying to get my setup working but now I am very confused what I am seeing.
I tried to execute mosquitto_pub command with multiple options from the Terminal window:

I am seeing exactly the same results regardless if Mosquitto MQTT Broker (HA add-on version)
is running or stopped. Of course, nothing is working. But it looks like bridging function may not
even required. I am very confused with my results.

When I am trying to use MQTT Explorer (on Windows 11 PC) everything is working perfectly fine.

Please help me to get things working from HA.

nickrout · May 20, 2023, 9:05pm

No, it is home assistant operating system.

nickrout · May 20, 2023, 9:22pm

mosquitto_pub is communicating directly with Amazon so your mosquitto.conf is irrelevant to mosquitto_pub

Try putting your bridging conf in a file just named bridge.conf in /share/mosquitto

nickrout · May 20, 2023, 9:35pm

And what makes you think it is not working? What does mosquitto_sub tell you?

Put another way, what are you are expecting to see?

vitalikkh · May 21, 2023, 11:38am

I am trying to control my Smart Bed (Reverie 5D).
If I execute “PUBLISH” command from MQTT Explorer my bed is moving accordingly.
This tells me all provided info is 100% correct.
However when I am using “mosquito_pub” command from Terminal window with all the same
options/parameters nothing is happening, i.e. bed is not moving.
Response “Client HA_AWS received CONNACK (0)” tells me the connection to the AWS MQTT
was established. So, all certificates, etc is also correct and accepted from the MQTT CLI.
Something must be wrong with ether Topic or Payload or both.
Next line has a correct Topic name and sends 10 bytes as a Payload.
Number of bytes is correct but I don’t see how Payload looks like.
The working payload is in JSON format : {“ABC”: “number”} This works from MQTT Explorer but
fails from the HA MQTT CLI.
Do you have any idea what could be wrong?

nickrout · May 21, 2023, 11:43am

If you showed us the payload instead of a picture of a red blob it might be helpful.

vitalikkh · May 21, 2023, 11:51am

This is what I figured out. Further more, the behavior is the same even if I stopped Mosquitto
MQTT service in HA. The CLI command seems to be still doing the same things.
So, do I still need to add config for Bridge function?
My current mosquitto.conf file is this:

# log_dest stdout
# log_type error
# log_type warning
# log_type notice
# log_type information

# log_type all

connection awsiot
address a2k32ezw8t07q7-ats.iot.us-east-1.amazonaws.com:8883

topic # out 1

try_private false
cleansession true
clientid HA_AWS
start_type automatic
notifications false

bridge_protocol_version mqttv311
bridge_attempt_unsubscribe false
bridge_insecure false

bridge_cafile /ssl/Amazon_AWS/Amazon_AWS_CA.pem
bridge_certfile /ssl/Amazon_AWS/Amazon_AWS_certificate.pem.crt
bridge_keyfile /ssl/Amazon_AWS/Amazon_AWS_private.pem.key

Do I need to rename mosquitto.conf to bridge.conf ?
The location for the *.conf is /share/mosquitto
If I change active: false to active: true the conf file is/was used but this did not change a behavior,

logins: []
require_certificate: false
certfile: fullchain.pem
keyfile: privkey.pem
customize:
  active: false    <--- changed to true
  folder: mosquitto

nickrout · May 21, 2023, 11:55am

Anyway in mosquitto_pub you have to escape the quote marks, ie Using The Mosquitto_pub and Mosquitto_sub MQTT Client Tools- Examples