Two questions about devices: EspEasy+MQTT, and Xiaomi PM2.5 Monitor

Configuration
1

I spent quite a bit of time in the past few days and I am now almost happy with my HA setup :slight_smile: However…

  1. I have a Sonoff Basic (WiFi) connected to my night light. I used to control it using Domoticz (http), but as I moved to HA, I now use MQTT. Took a while to set up, but seems to be working now. However, the switch has poor WiFi signal and loses MQTT broker connection from time to time - it then flips the GPIO to zero (and switches off the light). Has anyone had this issue? I use Retain=true on both EspEasy and HA. Should I switch to Generic HTTP (EspEasy) + RESTApi (HA)?
  2. One of the devices I have is a Xiaomi portable PM2.5 Air Quality Monitor - which works fine in HA, but I keep it off most of the time. As a result, the reading in HA ‘badge’ is usually ‘Unavailable’, and it also floods my log with failed connect attempts. Is there a way to show the last value in sensor? And disable logging? Or would you advise me to remove the device from HA altogether?
2

OK, I’ll respond to myself on the first thing (MQTT+EspEasy), as it might help someone :slight_smile:

So, when the EspEasy Sonoff was losing MQTT broker connection (due to weak WiFi signal), it would then restore the state based on the last MQTT message (disregarding the fact that I manually switched the state using the button afterwards). This is why it woke me a few times last night - the light would switch on a few times.

I think I have it sorted out now - I had to set ‘retain: false’ in the switch configuration in configuration.yaml. It seems like the problems are gone now.