Unicode Characters from MQTT

Configuration
1

Hi all,
I get messages from MQTT that contain unicode characters like “\u00f6” in text strings. How can I configure HA to display the special character?

Here an example what I see:

“Ladevorgang nach Ablauf der Abschaltverz\u00f6gerung gestoppt.”

I like to see:
“Ladevorgang nach Ablauf der Abschaltverzögerung gestoppt.”

That is the YAML config

mqtt:
  sensor:
    - name: "openWB State Str"
      unique_id: "openWBstate_str"
      state_topic: "openWB/openWB/chargepoint/2/get/state_str"
      #encoding: ""
      device:
        name: "openWB"
        identifiers:
          - "openWB"

Thanks for your help!

2

Display where?

Looks like the template engine converts it:

image
image676×594 47.2 KB

3

Does it mean I have to use a template too? Okay, when I add an additional template it works. Is it possible to avoid an additional template and add this to the sensor config?

4

Total guess, and this line often crops up in people’s questions but does nothing usually — try adding:

value_template: "{{ value }}"

to your config.

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5

Great, that works! I understand that the value needs to run through " {{ }}".

1 Like
6

oops, I put a fixed string in the config, not a states function. Both ways do not work, it still shows the wrong encoding. :thinking:

7

Where does it show it? Did you understand that the value_template was meant for the MQTT sensor?

mqtt:
  sensor:
    - name: "openWB State Str"
      unique_id: "openWBstate_str"
      state_topic: "openWB/openWB/chargepoint/2/get/state_str"
      value_template: "{{ value }}"
      device:
        name: "openWB"
        identifiers:
          - "openWB"

Can you see the MQTT topic in something like MQTT Explorer?

8

MQTT Explorer shows both:

image
image758×393 17.5 KB

The config is completely as you wrote above.

image

9

Try:

value_template: "{{ value.encode('utf-8').decode('unicode-escape') }}"

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image718×365 27 KB

10

Cool, now it works:

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image594×645 34.8 KB

Help me please, what is going on in this line?

value_template: "{{ value.encode('utf-8').decode('unicode-escape') }}"
1 Like
11

It’s taking the (ASCII / unencoded) string with the escaped special characters, converting it (encode) into a UTF-8 bytes sequence, then converting it (decode) into a Unicode string with real characters that are outside the ASCII range.

If you really want to get into the nuts and bolts:

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