What's a "cover"?

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1

I don’t want to hijack another thread, so I’ll ask separately.

So, what’s a “cover”. How is the cover component any different from MQTT switch?

I’ve looked at the Cover component in the docs, but it doesn’t say anywhere, ‘what’s a cover?’

Don’t yell at me, I’ve just recently become comfortable with groups. But I have several MQTT switches and sensors around the house and I am wondering if I am missing something.

2

A cover would be a door, or a blind/curtain over your window.

3

Not yelling :wink: but literary the first line in the docs explains it…

4

My confusion comes from doing all my own MQTT processing for my ESP8266 devices around the house. Mostly sensors and some switches. Now I am contemplating putting sensors on my garage doors and looking at the code in the Raspberry Pi GPIO Cover for ideas.

How hard can it be to determine if a door is open or closed?

5

There is nothing about a cover that can’t be done with switches. The advantage is (I think…) that you have one entity to control up/down/stop and several positions. Well… read the docs and see if it fits your needs. Still not yelling :wink: but the docs actually give pretty good examples of the cover component.

6

Thanks, I will definitely get more into covers when Ikea comes out with their motorized blinds. Not that I am in love with Ikea products, but they put a downward price pressure on other manufacturers.

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8

The cover entity will also give you three states: up, stop, and down, whereas a switch only gives you off and on

9

Also the Cover have position as an attribute.
position Integer between 0 and 100.

Meaning and assuming all relevant sensors exist:

  • With cover you could tell that garage door is e.g. 20% open.
  • With switch you can only tell open or closed, none of the substates in between. I have no idea what is the threshold when switch changes state in this kind of situation.
10

You thought about using the SonoffRF, flashed with Tasmota, and then some simple 433 contact devices? @DrZzs has a YouTube video on just that. Almost an Off The Shelf solution.

11

I’ll look at that. I only recently discovered Tasmota and am in the process of updating my Sonoff and ESP8266 devices to Tasmota. It’s capabilities sure beats the heck out of my code.

But, in general, I am really unhappy with the remarkably short range of 433 MHz control.

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12

What devices exist that return the position?

13

At least you can command cover to some position between 0-100%. Doest that require feedback from the system?

15

True, but the SonoffRF can easily be dotted about then relay the messages on. It is also less power hungry which is the trade off.

16

I hadn’t thought of that. It doesn’t matter which Sonoff publishes the MQTT message as long as one of them hears it.