MQTT sensor from io.adafruit.com broker: value unknown

Configuration
1

Apologies if this is not posted in the right section as I’m new to all of this.

I am trying to display the value of a temperature sensor using io.adafruit.com as my MQTT broker, but the value always reads “unknown”. As far as I can tell, HA is connecting with the MQTT broker properly since I can publish to the broker successfully, but I can’t get the sensor to display the value to a topic that I’m subscribed to.

Configuration is as follows:

mqtt:
  broker: io.adafruit.com
  port: 1883
  username: (username removed)
  password: (password removed)
sensor:
  - platform: mqtt
    state_topic: "schong∕feeds∕temperature"
    name: "Temperature"
    unit_of_measurement: "°F"
#    value_template: "{{ float(value_json.temperature) }}"

Have tried with both the last line commented out and uncommented out and with and without conversion to a float. Have also tried the last line as just:

    value_template: "{{ float(value) }}"

Sending the following using the MQTT publish service from within HA seems to update the MQTT broker, so I believe HA is connecting properly:

{"topic": "schong/feeds/temperature", "payload": 84, "qos": 1, "retain": true}

I do see the following in the HA logs:

2017-08-19 13:05:14 INFO (Thread-2) [homeassistant.components.mqtt] Successfully reconnected to the MQTT server

But, I don’t see any indication that HA is getting sensor updates even though I believe I have logging turned up enough:

logger:
  default: warning
  logs:
    homeassistant.components.mqtt: debug

Any insight would be greatly appreciated.

2

I would use the embedded broker to start with to make sure your configuration actually works

mqtt:

sensor:
  - platform: mqtt
    state_topic: "schong∕feeds∕temperature"
    name: "Temperature"
    unit_of_measurement: "°F"

and then publish to the topic using the publish topic. Make sure the topic field matches exactly (including case) and the payload field just has number.

Once this updates the sensor correctly, you know the configuration is correct and you can proceed to checking the adafruit broker connection.

3

Thanks very much for the reply. I had adafruit already set up, so I thought I’d start there. I will go ahead and give the embedded broker a try. I hadn’t realized the embedded broker was so easy to set up.

Appreciate the help.