Some MQTT Help needed

I feel a bit lost here regarding MQTT so hopefully someone can get me on the right track.
I’m running HassOS 4.11 on a PI3 and have a vouple of light switches and plugs attached to the system but wanted to expand.
Just installed a fan in my living room so got myself a Conbee 2 which appears to be working (got no zigbee devices) as it shows up on integration page and installed the addon for MQTT broker as I was lead to believe that is how I should be able to control the remove for the fan via Home assistant. I used the configuration code from the example on fan.mqtt so naturally it shows up on the card but doesn’t seem to do anything when I change settings (on/off, speed)
What do I need to do to get home assistant to send the rf messages to the fan?

Do you see your fan in the UI - configuration - integration - mqtt section?

Honikos thank you for responding.
No I do not see any devices or entities in the MQTT section.
The broker is set to discovery but I don’t know how/if that works.
I tried listening to the fan status topic from the configuration page of MQTT but that didn’t seem to do anything.
Since the UI have changed over the last couple of updates I no longer can find the log of MQTT so not sure where they moved that.

Have you tried http://mqtt-explorer.com/ to see if there are any messages broadcasted from the fan?

Thank you Aceindy just did and it only has the $SYS node showing so I guess that means that no messages are captured. What would be the next step?
“Update”
So it turned out that the example posted on the integrations fan.mqtt page had errors that was raising any flags.
After fixing the spelling mistakes in the example it does now show up in mqtt-explorer. I can see the values change in the explorer when I change the values on the card in HA, however the fan doesn’t react to any of it.
How do I get the fan to react to the changes or more interestingly how do I figure out what signals the fan remote is sending so I can replicate those.

You could try to use MQTT explorer to send commands manually to see if it responds.
It is possible to use customized MQTT commands from HA
I’ve done the same for my QS-WiFi-D02-2C dimmer.
Not sure if it helps you, but you will find the topic here

aceindy
I did try doing that and when publishing from the explorer the values on the HA card didn’t change however changing the values in the HA card was reflected in the explorer. Not sure how to interpret that.
Maybe I am over thinking this but I would expect the fan remote to send a numeric value to the fan that it then would react on. As such I am a little confused how the call of fan/speed/set = medium, for example gets translated into the correct value for the fan. I watched DrZzs Xiaomi video and in that it appears that zigbee devices send a numeric value back and forth. Is there something similar for MQTT and are there any tools out there to use to listen for codes on devices not yet integrated into HA?

@hassioNewb
MQTT explorer should be able to show all mqtt messages broadcasted on your network, not only HA messages.

It can also be used to send any mqtt message.

Iow, you should be able to control the fan from mqtt explorer, even when HA is disconnected…

Aceindy,

I have MQTT installed on my HA pi box which is sitting in the living-room as it is the most central location of the house. If I read your response correct I should see rf communication not only for my fan but also remotes for Roku and Kodi show up and non of them do. The history showed one communication for the fan a 9:30 today but not sure if that is accurate. I tried using the remove inches from conbee and no new messages showed up on the history.
Again I really which there were some kind of device I could use to figure out what numbers the remote is sending to the fan, especially since I was ultimately hoping to learn messages from my Kodi remote so I could integrate that completely into HA (current integration is very limited)
Do I need other software installed than the MQTT addon?
Have I misunderstood that conbee can receive and transmit rf values?

@ hassioNewb
The MQTT explorer you can install anywhere (i use mine on W10), provided they are on the same network as the other devices.
In the screenshot below you can see MQTT explorer receives all messages from both my devices (lamps) as well as HA (which basically is just ‘another’ mqtt device):
image

Aceindy
Thank you for trying to help,
Just a clarification - I should have written MQTT Broker instead of MQTT in my previous message. I have the broker installed on my HA box which is in the living room about 10 feet from the fan so wanted to point that out in case there were concerns about signal strength.
I have installed deConz because I remembered I had bought an IKEA Trådfri light + switch last year and wanted to try to connect that as it runs zigbee. I was hoping to get a verification that the conbee 2 stick was working.
Unfortunately I feel the test is inconclusive. The IKEA switch did turn up in the deconz web ui but I never managed to get the light showing up. Another issue I noticed was that there were no deconz_event in the available events section of the developer tools page.
I have no idea what any of this means but clearly I don’t really have anything working so it appears to be a bust.
I really appreciate any suggestions as where I go from here

I’m using zigbee2mqtt for my lights and motion-detectors :wink: