Reading GPIO binary sensor does not work

[athanassis (Thanassis)]

Hi,
I’ve tested the used sensor hw with a simple Python RPi script, on a Raspberry Pi Model 2 B, and it reads the state changes fine, when I change the input to the sensors.

When I connect the sensor hw to the HA raspberry (Model 4), HA does not read at all the sensor state changes. They are always seen as ‘Off’ in the GUI.

I have used a GPIO cable connector to make sure I don’t mess up with GPIO pins when switching the hw from one Pi to the other.

I’ve also used a voltage meter, and I see that the voltage is correctly raised to 3.3V from 0V in the input pin, but GUI does not follow. I tried setting small and large bounce_time but it didn’t help.

# Sensors
binary_sensor:
  - platform: rpi_gpio
    invert_logic: false
    pull_mode: 'DOWN'
    ports:
      6: Garage Door
      17: Front Gate
      27: Corridor Lights
      22: Garage Lights
      5: Front Door Light

Pins 6 and 17 are used also as state_pins of two covers, further below in the configuration and they work fine (the input is coming from the same sensor HW as the non-working 27,22 and 5 pins).

Any ideas how to solve or troubleshoot further?

[CaptTom (Tom)]

Not sure if applies to the Pi 2 B, but there’s a bunch of information about GPIO on a Pi 3 and 4 here:

Pi 4 and Gpio Issues

I’ve been running Pi3 with about 10 Reed sensors that were connected straight to Gpio pins without any issues. When I recently migrated to Pi4 I noticed that only some pins are actually turned on: gpio15 gpio14 gpio8 gpio7 gpio6 gpio5 gpio4 gpio3 gpio2 gpio1 gpio0 I came to this conclusion after enabling all of the Gpio pins in the HA config file. With nothing hooked up to them only the ones above showed up as “on” (if they are active they should show up as on/active). When you go to…

and here:

Problems Reading GPIO Pins

I’ve done a lot of searching, and posted a few specific questions, and I’m still floundering. Maybe if I ask this more generically someone can point me in the right direction… Does anybody successfully use GPIO pins for a simple input binary switch? How? I have a Raspberry Pi 3B+ running a Hass.io and HA at the current version. I have three GPIO pins connected to some relay contacts which are always either “on” (closed) or “off” (open.) It works exactly as designed… usually. But, at least se…

and here:

Pi GPIO Binary Sesnsor

Hello Im having a bit of touble with binary sensor on Pi GPIO, I have exhausted all hard wiring options, resistors, short wires, long wires, ferrite rings etc connected to various push button types (all normally open going normally closed momentary) in a live house enviroment. I have also tried a momentary relay connected to the GPIO input as this toggles in minimal ms. im fully educated on relays, wires etc as this has been my day to day job for many years, as a IP CCTV/Network Engineer. So …

Summary: HA doesn’t do GPIO pins well.

[athanassis (Thanassis)]

Thanks @CaptTom,
Not sure if I’m sad reading your reply because of HA not supporting the rpio_platform binary sensor, or glad that reading your command line based workaround here it finally worked for me.

I confirm have 5 binary sensors defined now with scan_interval set to 1s and work fine so far on RPi 4 model B.

[CaptTom (Tom)]

Glad it worked, thanks for letting us know!

Just to clarity, there has been some progress on updates for GPIO handling in HA. I haven’t really had the time or inclination to help test the updates, since the command-line workaround is stable and there are enough changes going on in HA lately that I just don’t want to add to them. It could be that, someday soon, we can go back to using the native GPIO processing.

I also want to point out that the workaround isn’t ideal for everyone. A scan_interval of 15 seconds is fine for my needs (monitoring my heating system) because things happen on much longer time scales than that. You’re having good luck with a one-second interval, great! But for some use cases (like a doorbell) that wouldn’t work.