MQTT Manual vs Discovery

[123 (Taras)]

You can define an MQTT Sensor (or MQTT Switch, Light, Lock, cover, etc) in YAML or you can create a script to define it via MQTT Discovery.

I provided someone else with an example here:

Manually add MQTT Entities

1. Create an MQTT Light using a script Assuming you have an existing scripts.yaml file, paste this into it and save the file:

Click to reveal scripts

## MQTT Discovery Test example_create: alias: 'Example MQTT Light - Create' sequence: service: mqtt.publish data: topic: 'homeassistant/light/example/config' retain: true payload: > { "name": "Example", "unique_id": &quo…

The script can also be used to override a discovered device. However, you must override all of the discovered device’s configuration and not just one part of it (i.e. you can’t just override its device_class alone).

MQTT Discovery is nothing more than Home Assistant subscribing to all topics beginning with homeassistant. A new entity will be created if the topic is in the correct format, namely something like this:

homeassistant/sensor/hallway_motion/config

and if it contains a payload that is also in the correct format. The format of the topic and payload are described here:

MQTT