Hello Erik. I received my unit about 2 months ago and finally had a chance to connect it up. I am getting these errors via MQTT.
Loading log…
2025-06-28 16:35:50: New connection from 192.168.93.76:64575 on port 1883.
2025-06-28 16:35:50: Client SaltSentry disconnected, not authorised.
I am positive about the MQTT username and password as I can connect via MQTT Broker with the same credentials. I wonder about that ClientID “SaltSentry”. See below the configuration page. Any pointers?
Hi Marty,
It seems like something wend wrong, in the fields username, password and topic, you should see the actual values you filled in, so unless you changed them to take the screenshot, you might want to try to fill them in again.
If that does not work right away, you might to do a factory reset and then try again.
Thank you for the suggestions. I now have twice tried a factory reset without success. Meaning, I get back to the same situation. I am new to ESPHome. But is there a way to do a diagnostic at that level?
Hi Marty,
Thanks for the update.
Just to clarify: the Salt Sentry uses MQTT by default, as described in the manual: Salt Sentry Manual v1.1 (EN)
ESPHome is a different way to use the Salt sentry— that’s also a perfectly good option! But if you’re using ESPHome, the setup is entirely different and the manual doesn’t apply. You can use this ESPHome example config:
ESPHome.yaml
Hi Erik,
I’ve been using a Salt Sentry for a while and it’s been fine, apart from some power cycling every now and then when it would stop reporting for some reason.
Recently it reports flat 100%, even though the salt is being used and inside the brine tank the level drops as usual.
Here’s some stats so you can see how it was trending, and how it is now:
I can connect to the device just fine, and I can see it publish to MQTT:
Message 0 received on saltsentry/mySecretTopic at 12:31 AM:
100
I tried powering off / on a few times, no luck. Any idea what could be the issue?
Thanks in advance,
Sorry for the late reply — I was away on vacation.
Thanks for sharing the details and screenshots. To help troubleshoot this properly, could you please send me a direct message?
Very interesting device, congrats!
Is there any chance to have a Zigbee module in the future?
Where can I buy it? Can you ship it to Italy?
Ik zou er graag 1 bij u bestellen wanneer zijn ze weer op voorraad
I am having the same problem.
It is my second unit as my previous ended up with the same issue.
@ErikNL do you know how this can be fixed? It’s such a great little device so it would be amazing to have it working trustworthy over time.
Is there a way to factory reset it and see if that helps?
i have added the integration repo for the pentair Softener. i have done some tweaks and published.
Possible bug when setting the distances. I set the Empty distance to 64.135.
When setting the distance with more than 2 decimal places it seems to wig out the interface. Sometimes after reloading the full and empty distances will have extra numbers with "} appended. When the Empty had the 3 decimal places I could not edit the full distance, it kept defaulting to 5.
Once I changed the empty to 64.14, I was not seeing the funny characters and was able to edit the full distance.
Not that I have that figured out, the distances I’m getting back is not right. I had it setup in the Kitchen and seemed to be working just fine. Now that it is mounted in the tank, the distances seem to be off. Tank is currently Empty and it is reporting that it’s only 7.9cm. It should be closer to that 64cm.
mqtt:
sensor:
- name: "Salt Sentry Percent"
state_topic: "saltsentry"
unit_of_measurement: "%"
default_entity_id: sensor.Salt_Sentry_Percent
unique_id: Salt_Sentry_Percent
- name: "Salt Sentry distance"
state_topic: "saltsentry_distance"
unit_of_measurement: "cm"
default_entity_id: sensor.Salt_Sentry_Distance
unique_id: Salt_Sentry_Distance
12:03 Putting the lid back on and figuring out the decimal place issue.
12:39 Seeing that its not right and taking the lid off again pointing it across the room
12:50 putting lid on.
Any Suggestions?
Hi Scott,
The issue with more than 2 decimal places sounds indeed like a UI/config parsing bug. I’ll take that into account for a future firmware update, but for now I’d recommend sticking to 1–2 decimals (higher precision probably isn’t really useful for the use case anyway).
Regarding the incorrect distance (7.9 cm vs ~64 cm), it’s hard to say where that comes from.
Could you share what type of water softener you have and what kind of salt you’re using (pellets, crystals, tablets, etc.)? That can make a difference.
Feel free to send me a DM if you want to troubleshoot further
Thank you for the reply.
I has it setup on the kitchen counter and it seemed to be okay. I mounted it to the top of the lid of my brine tank. I've pointed it across the room vs in the tank and the value changes, but not anywhere close to the distance it should be, it only changes a cm or few. The salt tank is the rock salt type. The task has one back of salt in it , so it's not just water at the bottom.
I was assuming that the distance it just raw distance and nothing to do with the distance to full/empty, that the Full Empty distances were to calculate the percent value.
I do have VSCode setup on my Mac. I have not tried connecting to it.
Hi Scott, I just send you a DM to see if we can figure out the issue.
I do have some Salt sentries back in stock by the way: https://www.tindie.com/products/ErikLemcke/salt-sentry-water-softener-monitor/
