Trigger an automation using type MQTT

[Arsenick]

Hi! I’m unable to make this work… I have a zigbee doorlock in zigbee2mqtt. I want to trigger an automation when a specific user id unlock the door. It was working flawless with ZHA using zha_event but now that I’ve moved to Z2M, I’m unable to make this work with the trigger type MQTT. If anyone could give me hint/help that would be really appreciated!

Here’s the output of mosquitto_sub when I unlock the door with the user, as you can see the important part for me here is “action_user”:6 and the topic is "zigbee2mqtt/mqtt doorlock "

zigbee2mqtt/mqtt doorlock {"action":"unlock","action_source":0,"action_source_name":"keypad","action_user":6,"auto_relock_time":0,"battery":96,"linkquality":72,"lock_state":"unlocked","state":"UNLOCK","voltage":5600}
zigbee2mqtt/mqtt doorlock {"action":"","auto_relock_time":0,"battery":96,"linkquality":72,"lock_state":"unlocked","state":"UNLOCK","voltage":5600}
zigbee2mqtt/mqtt doorlock/action unlock

I’ve played with different combination of this automation without any luck, the trigger just doesn’t work…

alias: Unlock notification - UserX
description: ''
trigger:
  - platform: mqtt
    topic: zigbee2mqtt/mqtt_doorlock
condition:
  - condition: template
    value_template: '{{ action_user == 6 }}'
action:
  - service: notify.mobile_app_cell
    data:
      message: Code 6 unlocked the door
      title: Code 6 unlocked the door
      data:
        ttl: 0
        priority: high
mode: single

I’ve read the documentation (MQTT Device Trigger - Home Assistant) but can’t see what I’m missing…

[francisp (Francis)]

I think the problem is that your topic contains a space. The topic from the mqtt trigger needs to match exactly the topic sent by your mqtt broker, but you added an underscore.

[koying (Chris B)]

Maybe that, but surely that you have to properly extract the value from the json

condition:
  - condition: template
    value_template: '{{ trigger.payload_json.action_user == 6 }}'

[Arsenick]

That was my main concern, I tried replacing the space with a _, escaping before the space with a backslash, put int double quote, as is with the space. None of them worked … I’ll try the suggestion bellow. Thanks for your help!

[Arsenick]

Thanks for your suggestion! At least I can see a trace now but something’s wrong and I can’t see what/why. How can I debug those kind of things ?

In my trace I see this:

In first step Détails:

This node was not executed and so no further trace information is available.

Trace Timeline:

Stopped because of unknown reason “null” at 17 January 2022, 11:09:52 (runtime: 0.00 seconds)

I see two MQTT messages when I unlock,

zigbee2mqtt/mqtt doorlock {"action":"unlock","action_source":0,"action_source_name":"keypad","action_user":6,"auto_relock_time":0,"battery":96,"linkquality":63,"lock_state":"unlocked","state":"UNLOCK","voltage":5700}

And just after the doorlock resend another one without the action_user and unlocked data:

zigbee2mqtt/mqtt doorlock {"action":"","auto_relock_time":0,"battery":96,"linkquality":63,"lock_state":"unlocked","state":"UNLOCK","voltage":5700}

Is it possible the second message override the first and can’t trigger on that?

[francisp (Francis)]

I think the best way is to rename your device in Zigbee2mqtt to mqtt_doorlock. That way, you will get messages on

zigbee2mqtt/mqtt_doorlock

[Arsenick]

The space wasn’t the problem, I confirmed it by changing the device name. This automation doesn’t work and I can’t understand why or how can I debug this…

alias: Unlock notification - User6
description: ''
trigger:
  - platform: mqtt
    topic: zigbee2mqtt/DoorlockAvant
condition:
  - condition: template
    value_template: '{{ trigger.payload_json.action_user == ''6'' }}'
action:
  - service: notify.mobile_app_cell
    data:
      message: User 6 unlocked the door
      title: User 6 unlocked the door
      data:
        ttl: 0
        priority: high
mode: single
variables:
  slot: '{{ trigger.event.data.args.code_slot }}'

I still get the " This node was not executed and so no further trace information is available." or “Stopped because of unknown reason “null” at 18 January 2022, 07:53:10 (runtime: 0.00 seconds)”

[Arsenick]

I tried to create a sensor too, get the same result…

sensor:
  - platform: mqtt
    name: "User 6 door"
    state_topic: "zigbee2mqtt/DoorlockAvant"
    value_template: "{{ value_json.action_user == '6' }}"

The first time I typed the code, the sensor became False and never got true.

Here’s the state of the entity in dev tools:

Here’s a screenshot of mqtt explorer showing the topic I see related to the doorlock:

[Arsenick]

Here’s another thing I tried, I created a sensor, that way when this specific user enter it’s code the sensor turn true, otherwise it’s false.

  - platform: mqtt
    name: "User porte avant"
    state_topic: "zigbee2mqtt/DoorlockAvant"
    json_attributes_topic: "zigbee2mqtt/DoorlockAvant"
    value_template: "{{ value_json.action_user == 6 }}"

but I get the same result, when I enter the code, the state of the sensor seems to “reset” to false, but never become true…

[francisp (Francis)]

Just to narrow it down:
If you leave the condition out, does it trigger ?

[Arsenick]

@francisp

If you leave the condition out, does it trigger ?

That’s a great idea. After removing the condition the automation seems to “trigger”, but it doesn’t really. By that I mean, there’s new traces but they all show the exact same messages I had before and action doens’t run:

And

---

I realized there was this piece of code in my automation:

variables:
  slot: '{{ trigger.event.data.args.code_slot }}'

that was literally stuck in my automation, I used this variables in my old automation with ZHA, I can’t remove it when I delete, save the yaml it come back… So I created a brand new automation with the exact same code minus the variables and this one work like a charm…

Thanks for your help, I’m not sure if I should open a bug or something because there’s definitely something not working as expected but I’m not sure I would be able to produce any good info/logs on that…