Utility Meter - jumps when restarting?

Configuration
1

I notice when I restart HomeAssistant the Utility Meters seem to jump, presumably because initially the sensors from MQTT are “unknown” which I guess is zero; then populate their values.

This means if (for example) I have a daily rain gauge sensor if we got 0.25 inch and I restart HomeAssistant it suddenly reads 0.5 inches for the day…not good.

Is there any way too fix this?

2

Retain your mqtt sensor states in the broker.

3

Is that something I can set up with the YAML of my sensors, or is that something that someone has to change in the RTL433 addon?

4

You have to get whatever is sending the mqtt messages to send them with the retained flag set.

5

ugh, I guess I would have to submit a feature request then.

Is there some other kind of sensor that would correctly handle the differences, or ignore when it is zero?

6

I think I may have found where it is sent, and if I understand the -r means it already has retain set.

  echo $line | /usr/bin/mosquitto_pub -h $MQTT_HOST -u $MQTT_USER -P $MQTT_PASS -i RTL_433 -r -l -t $MQTT_PATH

Is there a possibility the “unknown” value is happening if HomeAssistant loads faster than the addons initialize or something?

7

I suppose it is possible that the utility meter platform could be loaded before the mqtt platform.

8

is there a way to delay it loading for a bit (say 90 seconds) to give everything else a better chance at initializing properly first?

9

Not that I am aware of.