Smarter SmartThings with MQTT and Home Assistant

benflux · November 8, 2018, 11:04pm

yes, all those that i want are ticked.

gnomesoup · November 9, 2018, 2:54am

I was never able to get automatic discovery working. I manually added all my devices. It felt like a lot of work at the time but I’m really a lot happier controlling everything in home Assistant.

All the devices and their states show up every time you subscribe to the topic in another mqtt utility which is helpful.

hongtat · November 9, 2018, 3:06am

It doesn’t support MQTT Discovery.

dmoses1969 · November 9, 2018, 3:09am

Went thru the same thing last night trying to figure it out. I did delete MQTT Configuration from my Home assistant configuration file. Deleted the username/password from Mosquito MQTT add-on but had to add all my devices back in to binary_sensor.yaml file to get them to show up. They will not get discovered.

benflux · November 9, 2018, 5:12am

So, if we’re concluding that it can’t discover them, @hongtat what was the mqtt utility you used to see all the devices and states?

hongtat · November 9, 2018, 6:54am

You have to add the Smarthings devices into HASS manually.

For example: I have a contact sensor “Main Door” in ST, I have to add this in HASS -

- platform: mqtt
  name: "Main Door Contact"
  state_topic: "smartthings/Main Door/contact"
  retain: true
- platform: mqtt
  name: "Main Door Contact Temperature"
  state_topic: "smartthings/Main Door/temperature"
  unit_of_measurement: '°C'
  retain: true
- platform: mqtt
  name: "Main Door Contact Battery"
  state_topic: "smartthings/Main Door/battery"
  unit_of_measurement: "%"
  retain: true

benflux · November 9, 2018, 7:24am

but how did you know that unit_of_measurement was the syntax to use for that device?

hongtat · November 9, 2018, 7:57am

You can find them in ST.
Temperature is either C or F.
Battery is usually in %.

gnomesoup · November 10, 2018, 3:59am

Regarding your question about how to see the device states, I use the mqtt command line tools in the terminal. I’m using mosquitto, so I type the following:

mosquitto_sub -h localhost -v -t smartthings/#

Make sure to change “localhost” to the ip address of you mqtt server. That should print all of your devices and their current state assuming you didn’t uncomment the retain: false line in the mqtt config.

RyanRayNeff · November 11, 2018, 7:17pm

Figuring out the syntax for different devices took me a while. Often I dug through other peoples config examples until I found the hardware I needed to copy. These might be helpful:

github.com

RyanRayNeff/hassio/blob/master/light.yaml

# These lights are connected to a Smartthings hub, connected to Hass.io Via vkorns MQTT Bridge
# IMPORTANT: If you are using the Smartthings hub, you must keep the retain flag to false.
# If you initially configure the devices with a retain: true, and later change it, you 
# will see odd behavior. If that happens, you must uninstall then re-install the mqtt hass.io
# component to refresh the database.

# GE Z-wave Wireless In-Wall paddle switch 12722
- platform: mqtt
  name: "Office Lights"
  state_topic: "smartthings/Office Lights/switch/state"
  command_topic: "smartthings/Office Lights/switch/cmd"
  payload_on: "on"
  payload_off: "off"
  retain: false
  optimistic: false
  qos: 2

# GE Z-wave Wireless In-Wall paddle dimmer 14294
- platform: mqtt
  name: "Dining Room Lights"

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github.com

RyanRayNeff/hassio/blob/master/sensor.yaml

  # Current weather
  - platform: yr
    name: Weather
    monitored_conditions:
      - temperature
      - precipitation
 
  - platform: yr
    name: Weather in 1 hours
    forecast: 1
    monitored_conditions:
      - precipitation
  
  # Pi hardware stuff: https://home-assistant.io/components/sensor.systemmonitor/ 
  - platform: systemmonitor
    resources:
      - type: disk_use_percent
        arg: /home
      - type: memory_free
      - type: disk_free

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ChrisK · December 6, 2018, 7:57pm

I got a SmartThings hub recently. I have lights and water sensors integrated in via the native app at present.

I’ve been working through getting the mqtt-bridge/smartapp/device handler working for HA integration.

All are running on a single host as docker instances;

I have setup HA, mosquitto as my mqtt-broker, configured HA with mqtt and one light, and configured the mqtt-st-bridge container. Everything up to that point appears to be running fine;

From mosquitto / mqtt-broker I see:

1544115808: New connection from 192.168.1.40 on port 1883.
1544115808: New client connected from 192.168.1.40 as 1ec789e6-1e69-4a26-8eb1-5668be164dde (c1, k60).
1544116003: Socket error on client mqttjs_9af5c13f, disconnecting.
1544116004: New connection from 192.168.1.40 on port 1883.
1544116004: New client connected from 192.168.1.40 as mqttjs_432703d4 (c1, k10).
1544116902: Saving in-memory database to /mosquitto/data/mosquitto.db.

The mqtt-st-bridge is listening on 8081 as I have an ubiquiti dockerized service running on 8080 right now.

info: Starting SmartThings MQTT Bridge - v3.0.0
info: Loading configuration
info: Loading previous state
info: Perfoming configuration migration
info: Saving current state
info: Connecting to MQTT at mqtt://192.168.1.40
info: Configuring autosave
info: Configuring API
info: Listening at http://localhost:8081
info: Saving current state
info: Saving current state

The one challenge I’m seeing is after adding the mqtt bridge Device in the Smartthings IDE it seems to be stuck in “Active” and not “Online” and I never see the ST Hub establish a link to the mqtt-st-bridge;

EDIT: apparently I can only put one image in a post, so take my word on the “Active” vs “Online” in the IDE, but we can see that you cannot see any connections to the local docker on 8081 below:

$docker exec -it mqtt-st-bridge /bin/sh
/usr/src/app # netstat -an | grep 8081
tcp        0      0 :::8081                 :::*                    LISTEN 
 
/usr/src/app # ifconfig | grep -e "inet addr\|HWaddr"
<snip>
ens160    Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:0C:29:0F:98:A0  
          inet addr:192.168.1.40  Bcast:192.168.1.255  Mask:255.255.255.0
          inet addr:127.0.0.1  Mask:255.0.0.0

I have it properly configured with the IP address, port and MAC
52%20PM

How can I troubleshoot the connection between the ST hub and the mqtt-st-bridge? I see no logs from the Smartthings IDE, and the only Events on the mqtt-device I created is the original creation message.

ChrisK · December 6, 2018, 7:59pm

Seeing if I can post my other image from the ST IDE where it shows “Active” only:

knackrack615 · December 10, 2018, 3:43am

Hello, is there a way to configure the bridge in a way so it pushes the state for every device in ST every x minutes? Would be useful for instances where something happens and the retained states are lost (and also for devices that have batteries and you’d have to wait until the percentage drops to know their value so you can configure them).

Gabriele_Galloppa · December 14, 2018, 12:02pm

hello have you ever tried the samsung wifi air conditioners?

El_Duderino · December 14, 2018, 3:57pm

Should I be seeing anything in the MQTT logs when a Smartthings sensor is opened/closed? I’m now seeing it in the logs of the ST bridge as well as the <> portion of HA, but not quite sure what to do next lol.

techwithjake · December 14, 2018, 4:10pm

Are you seeing states updating the dev-states portion? If you’re seeing things update in there as well as the ST Bridge Logs, you should be pretty much ready to go.

El_Duderino · December 14, 2018, 5:22pm

I am seeing activities in the dev-states, so now I guess I just need to figure out what to do with this MQTT stuff

techwithjake · December 14, 2018, 6:24pm

Might be overthinking it then. If you set the Status and Command states properly and you’re seeing updates, it sounds like you only need to send commands from HA and see if it properly updates to ST. MQTT is more of in the background rather than front facing.

ChaoticUnreal · December 21, 2018, 1:38pm

So I set this all up last night and I’m seeing messages going from Smartthings to HA. However I can’t seem to get messages to go from HA back to Smartthings. If I watch the logs of the smartthings bridge I can see the message there but smartthings doesn’t actually do anything with it.

I’m just testing it with a light bulb and attempting to toggle it on/off (before I add everything else to HA).

info: Incoming message from SmartThings: smartthings/Master Bedroom Closet/switch = on
info: Incoming message from MQTT: smartthings/Master Bedroom Closet/switch = on
info: Skipping duplicate message from: smartthings/Master Bedroom Closet/switch = on
info: Incoming message from MQTT: smartthings/Master Bedroom Closet/switch = off

That is the log from the smartthings bridge docker (and I can see the MQTT message in an app on my desktop as well)

Any suggestions on next steps to debug the problem would be useful.

nigelmwilliams7 · January 3, 2019, 9:51am

I have got my pi 3b+ and setup Hassbian as well as MQTT following the instructions here and on youtube here https://youtu.be/lUsMVrs1ot0
Thanks everyone for the suggestions.

I have exposed 1 switch, 1 motion sensor and 1 contact via the STT SmartApp and I can see state changes in the MQTT log on the pi…
smartthings/HallwayMotion1/motion active
smartthings/LandingContact/contact closed
smartthings/LandingContact/contact open
smartthings/HallwayMotion1/motion inactive
smartthings/LandingLights/switch on
smartthings/LandingLights/switch off

I have tried to configure the light switch in configuration.yaml to start but I am not seeing the state changes reflected in Overview; the device is shown but its state is not updated on the Overview. see config below -

switch:
platform: mqtt
name: “LandingLights”
state_topic: “smartthings/LandingLights/switch”
command_topic: “smartthings/LandingLights/switch”
payload_on: “on”
payload_off: “off”
retain: true

Does anyone have any advice suggestions and guidance on why this is not working?
Is there an issue with the connection between MQTT and HA? The MQTT icon is in the left hand pane below COnfiguration…

how should I configure these 3 devices within Home Assistant configuration.yaml please?
I am looking for examples to learn from…