Salt sentry: Water softener monitoring device

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124

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?

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125

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.

126

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?

127

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

128

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:

Screenshot 2025-07-24 at 12.28.51 AM
Screenshot 2025-07-24 at 12.28.51 AM3302×1008 195 KB

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,

129

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?

130

Very interesting device, congrats!
Is there any chance to have a Zigbee module in the future?

131

Where can I buy it? Can you ship it to Italy?