Dear Community - I’m not sure where to post this query, it could be an issue with Multiscrape (a very handy HACS add-on) or its just how HA works? So apologies if this is the wrong place. I have a sensor which publishes a set of values (water temperatures) when you poll it via HTML. I use Multiscrape to do this every 300s and it works beautifully. It separates out the semi-colon delimited values into my sensor variables and I see the updates in the state database. I can see them in the history, its all marvellous. However at certain times I want to poll the sensor more frequently. This is triggered by a binary sensor changing to ON. I can see that is working, I can see the automation being triggered and cycling the appropriate number of times (every 60s instead of 300s) while the binary_sensor is ON and each time calling Multiscrape to poll the sensor. On the sensor console (an ESP8266) I can see the queries arriving and the responses returning. BUT none of this data goes into the HA database (I am using MAriaDB). Also when I call the service manually from Dev Tools - that data also does not appear in the database.
So what am I missing. Is this how HA works - manually called services that poll sensors don’t update the state table? Or is it a Multiscrape issue? Or most likely some obscure user error. I’ve not posted any code as I’m not sure what would be relevant but happy to do that if it will help.
Any help much appreciated,
John.
Having scratched my head about this for several days, no sooner had I posted than I had a bit of a breakthrough which I suspect narrows down the issue to a Multiscrape bug - so it makes more sense to raise a bug on the Mutliscrape GIT. The additional relevant facts are as follows. When I originally created my Mutliscrapre definition in configuration.yaml I did not give it a name. I have since named it ‘hw_tank’. I noticed that I actually have three services available:
‘Multiscrape scraping component: trigger_scraper_noname_0
Multiscrape scraping component: trigger_scraper_noname_1
Multiscrape scraping component: trigger_hw_tank’
The first one (noname_0) I think is related to another multiscrape sensor I have (which is currently #'d out in my configuration.yaml as I only use it during the summer)
The second one (noname_1) must be the service created when my new multiscrape sensor did not have a name.
The last one (_hw_tank) reflects the name I have since given the sensor.
SO I have been calling the last service (_hw_tank). That appears to do nothing not even poll the sensor.
When I call noname_0 that polls the device but does not update the sensors (or therefore the states database).
When I call noname_1 that polls and updates the sensors as expected.
So I think this is an issue with how Multiscrape is handling the naming of its associated services AND it is confused by the fact that I previously had a service which is currently not in use.
So, sorry to waste everyone’s time here, I will contact the add-ons author danieldotnl.
John.
Just to close this thread. Multiscrape author danieldotnl was very helpful. Pointed out a typo in my YAML which explained some of the odd behaviour and a small bug with tidying up old service names when only restarting the add-on instead of restarting HA.
Anyway fixing my YAML and a reboot of HA made everything work as expected.