Rtl_433 addon not communicating to mosquitto/MQTT?

Configuration
,
1

Hi - I’m banging my head against the wall trying to figure out why I can’t get the rtl_433 addon to talk to MQTT. I set it up a few days ago, and it seemed to be working great (i.e. I was seeing the 433mhz sensors showing up as Devices in Home Assistant, and they were reporting correct values), but now it seems to no longer be updating and the values seen in Home Assistant are from ~2 days ago and no longer updating.

HA Setup: Core 2024.5.4, Supervisor 2024.06.2, Operating System 12.2, Frontend 20240501.1. Running on an ODROID mini PC. I have the following addons: mosquitto broker, rtl_433, rtl_433 mqtt auto discovery, mqtt explorer. I also have the MQTT integration. In home assistant I created a non-admin “mqttuser”+password, and use that as the login for all of the addons that require it.

I have other devices that communicate over mosquitto/MQTT and they are working fine, it’s only the devices coming in from rtl_433 that are not updating.

If I open the rtl_433 addon and look at the “log” tab, I see recent+sensible dates+times+values, such as:

time : 2024-07-14 12:34:53
model : Acurite-Tower
id : 4601
channel : A
Battery : 1
Temperature: 25.3 C
Humidity : 51 %
Integrity : CHECKSUM

time : 2024-07-14 12:35:09
model : Acurite-Tower
id : 4601
channel : A
Battery : 1
Temperature: 25.3 C
Humidity : 51 %
Integrity : CHECKSUM

However, if I look in MQTT explorer at that “Acurite Tower device4601”, the “time” field has been stuck on “2024-07-13T00:26:17.667658-0700” (which is ~2 days ago), and the temperature has been stuck at the same value as well.

So if I’m understanding right, rtl_433 is correctly reading/intertrepting the values from the RTL-SDR radio dongle, but somehow the connection between rtl_433 and mosquitto/MQTT is not working?

Has anybody encountered this? I’ve searched the forums and google and found a few suggestions, but nothing has resolved this yet,

2

This is my rtl_433.conf.template:

# This is an empty template for configuring rtl_433. mqtt information will be
# automatically added. Create multiple files ending in '.conf.template' to
# manage multiple rtl_433 radios, being sure to set the 'device' setting. The
# device must be set before mqtt output lines.
# https://github.com/merbanan/rtl_433/blob/2b8693ea24da35eb26897ab1690754e74a137630/conf/rtl_433.example.conf



output mqtt://192.168.0.100:1883,user=mqttuser,pass={I TYPED MY PASSWORD IN HERE},retain=1
report_meta time:iso:usec:tz

# rtl_433 defaults to listening on 433.92MHz, but even if that's what you need, 
# it's probably a good idea to specify the frequency explicitly to avoid confusion:
frequency 433.92M

# if you decide to use the MQTT auto discovery script or add-on, its documentation
# recommends converting units in all of the data coming out of rtl_433 into SI:
convert si

# You might also want to narrow down the list of protocols that rtl_433 should try to decode. 
# The full list can be found under "Supported device protocols" section of the README
# https://github.com/merbanan/rtl_433/blob/master/README.md

# [11]  Acurite 609TXC Temperature and Humidity Sensor
# [40]  Acurite 592TXR temp/humidity, 592TX temp, 5n1, 3n1, Atlas weather station, 515 fridge/freezer, 6045 lightning, 899 rain, 1190/1192 leak
# [142] Fine Offset Electronics/ECOWITT WH51, SwitchDoc Labs SM23 Soil Moisture Sensor

protocol 11
protocol 40
protocol 142

# To keep the same topics when switching between the normal and edge versions,
# use this output line instead.
# output mqtt://${host}:${port},user=${username},pass=${password},retain=${retain},devices=rtl_433/9b13b3f4-rtl433/devices[/type][/model][/subtype][/channel][/id],events=rtl_433/9b13b3f4-rtl433/events,states=rtl_433/9b13b3f4-rtl433/states

# Uncomment the following line to also enable the default "table" output to the
# addon logs.
output kv

# Disable TPMS sensors by default. These can cause an overwhelming number of
# devices and entities to show up in Home Assistant.
# This list is generated by running:
# rtl_433 -R help 2>&1 | grep -i tpms | sd '.*\[(\d+)\].*' 'protocol -/run.sh'
#    [59]  Steelmate TPMS
#    [60]  Schrader TPMS
#    [82]  Citroen TPMS
#    [88]  Toyota TPMS
#    [89]  Ford TPMS
#    [90]  Renault TPMS
#    [95]  Schrader TPMS EG53MA4, PA66GF35
#    [110]  PMV-107J (Toyota) TPMS
#    [123]* Jansite TPMS Model TY02S
#    [140]  Elantra2012 TPMS
#    [156]  Abarth 124 Spider TPMS
#    [168]  Schrader TPMS SMD3MA4 (Subaru)
#    [180]  Jansite TPMS Model Solar
#    [186]  Hyundai TPMS (VDO)
#    [201]  Unbranded SolarTPMS for trucks
#    [203]  Porsche Boxster/Cayman TPMS
protocol -59
protocol -60
protocol -82
protocol -88
protocol -89
protocol -90
protocol -95
protocol -110
protocol -123
protocol -140
protocol -156
protocol -168
protocol -180
protocol -186
protocol -201
protocol -203
3

did you ever get this working? I got stuck at the installation. the instructions are horrible!

4

Yes - after I decided that the rtl433 part was working, I figured it was an issue with Mosquitto/MQTT. I don’t recall exactly, but I think I started by doing a full update of Home Assistant and Mosquitto/MQTT. I think I also had to uninstall Mosquito/MQTT and reinstall them because I realized there were some weird issues with configuration/update. Regardless, after doing all that it worked fine and Mqtt was getting the messages fine from rtl433.

It’s working well for me now, has been very stable once I got it working. I agree the documentation could use some work!

5

i have had this working for some time - until it did not. rtl_433 continues to see signals but rtl__433 autodiscover monsquitto broker MQTT did not so anything, uninstalled all several times (with reboots) without any progress. drives me nuts, 2 full days wasted so far.

As i am accessing remotely, i am unable to clear config files (wherever they maybe residing)
(have HAOS running on a nuc).

I wish there was a clear guide.

I have had some help with specific questions before it stopped working, but nothing that could be described as a guide for new users can be found. the exisiting documentation is far from user friendly.
A shame had a dashboard setup all working, now that work seems wasted too.
May revisit if I find more info.