Retain total values of pulse_meter

ESPHome
1

Hi there,

i’m using esphome with home assistant for a while now. My last project was making my watermeter a smart one. I used a wemos d1 mini an an inductive sensor on my meter and it works quite well. Since I made a few restarts of the wemos I discovered that my “total”-values were not stored. So I wanted to fix this but somehow I am doing something wrong.
This ist my esphome config file for the metering device:

esphome:
  name: metering-esp
  friendly_name: metering_esp

esp8266:
  board: d1_mini

# Enable logging
logger:

# Enable Home Assistant API
api:
  encryption:
    key: "xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx"
  services:
    - service: set_total
      variables:
        new_total: int
      then:
        - pulse_meter.set_total_pulses:
            id: watermeter
            value: !lambda 'return new_total;'

ota:
  password: "xxxxxxx"

wifi:
  ssid: !secret wifi_ssid
  password: !secret wifi_password

  # Enable fallback hotspot (captive portal) in case wifi connection fails
  ap:
    ssid: "Metering-Esp Fallback Hotspot"
    password: "xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx"

captive_portal:
  
sensor:
  - platform: pulse_meter
    id: "watermeter"
    pin: 12
    name: "Wasserzähler Durchflus"
    unit_of_measurement: "liter/min"
    total:
      name: "Wasserzähler Total"
      unit_of_measurement: "m³"
      accuracy_decimals: 3
      device_class: water
      state_class: total_increasing
      filters:
        - multiply: 0.001

switch:
  - platform: restart
    name: "Restart metering-esp"

So this api service is not working and I don’t get it why. Do I have to define a helper in HA to retain the value and enter it for the “int” or anything other wrong? I read some other threads but still I did not figure out how it could work. My goal is to synchronize the value shown on the real meter and HA.

Any hints for me?

2

I don’t believe I have had any luck trying to change a sensor type once it was defined. IIRC when the energy dash was introduced, I wound up giving them another name and just creating a new sensor.

3

The aim of my yaml was not to change the sensor type. The aim was to set it’s init-value after a reboot of the esp for example. It must be damn simple, but actually I don’t get it…

4

You’ll need to store the value. To do this on the esp you can use either the number component or a global variable.

5

Thanks for the links and suggesting to save the values to the esp flash memory. I just wonder if this will survive a firmware update of the esp. With my - maybe a little naive - approach I tried to save the current value (total) to HA and send it back to the esp as a new init value after booting (could be solved by storing it in the flash memory) or even an update of the esp firmware (probably not solved by flash storage).

6

With the global variable, the restore value option

image

States that it is stored in rtc as well as flash.

7

Thanks for your example. I try to implement the write to flash story in a few days.