Why won't my 433 sensor show up, just the neighbors?

Realelwood · April 28, 2019, 2:14pm

My sensors won’t show up anymore, I have 3 identical ones with different purchase dates. It would remarkable if they all decided to not transmit at the same time.

I went out and got a new one, this one even comes from Telldus, neither this one will show up. However I get readings from some other sensor, probably a neighbor. I’ve been getting those signals for years.

What could be wrong? Tellstick Duo, that seems to work fine with switches and lights in the system. RPi 3B+ with a 2,5A PSU.

Zwave also fine. System is newly installed, initially I could read 2 out of 3 thermometers and the “neighbor” . After a few days only “neighbor”.

Only 2 powered atm, trying different channels with no luck.

Realelwood · May 8, 2019, 7:57pm

Troubleshoot continues, I’ve tried the standard Tellstick Duo antenna no luck, moved the sensors from being about 30 cm from the antenna to a few meters to 10 meters away still no change.

Today i tried the Tellstick Duo with my Macbook, all the sensors, even the odd one on the right appears immediately and registers, rebooted a couple of time, pulled batteries from sensors and restarted. Reports every time, tried with different antennas, everything works.

Put the gateway back and rebooted HA, guess what, some sensors appear, reboot, no sensors (except the neighbor), reboot, some of my sensors is being read occasionaly sometimes with hours between readings sometimes every 2 minutes.

Is there a change in the HassOS that causes this? Have read the latest update posts without finding anything. It’s almost seems as something is out of sync, even though i know that’s not how it works.

Will most likely try a reinstall this weekend, if it persists i have an older RPi 2 that i will use to rule out the Pi.

DeadEnd · May 8, 2019, 8:31pm

Are you watching Home Assistant or MQTT broker?

In your initial post you mention that your sensors “won’t show up”.
Are you referring to not getting updates in Home Assistant, or are you not getting topics published to MQTT?

If you are only watching Home Assitant, use an MQTT client and subscribe to all topics to see if the sensors are publishing to MQTT.

Also, what software are you using to translate the 433 signal to MQTT message?
This is another potential failure point. You need to step through the process and see where the failure is.

Reinstalling could be a waste of time if the problem isn’t in Home Assistant - you need to do a bit more investigating to see where the failure is so you know where to work. From what you’ve posted so far I only see the beginning (sensor) and end (home assistant) - the in-between has at least 2 more systems (433 translation to MQTT and the broker itself).

Cheers and good luck!
DeadEnd

Realelwood · May 9, 2019, 4:24am

Can my configuration.yaml be the culperate?
I saw this in my log:

Setup failed for introduction: Integration not found.
Setup failed for customize: Integration not found.

So i disabled the lines !include customize.yaml and now it seems to read all the sensors. Problem is that all my friendly names are gone, if i include customize.yaml again i have sensor issues.

What lines should be deleted/changed to get rid of the two error messages in the log?

homeassistant:
  # Name of the location where Home Assistant is running
  name: Home
  # Location required to calculate the time the sun rises and sets
  latitude: 58.28365
  longitude: 12.28864
  # Impacts weather/sunrise data (altitude above sea level in meters)
  elevation: 36
  # metric for Metric, imperial for Imperial
  unit_system: metric
  # Pick yours from here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tz_database_time_zones
  time_zone: Europe/Stockholm
  # Customization file
  #customize: !include customize.yaml

# Show links to resources in log and frontend
introduction:

# Enables the frontend
frontend:

# Enables configuration UI
config:

# Uncomment this if you are using SSL/TLS, running in Docker container, etc.
# http:
#   base_url: example.duckdns.org:8123

# Checks for available updates
# Note: This component will send some information about your system to
# the developers to assist with development of Home Assistant.
# For more information, please see:
# https://home-assistant.io/blog/2016/10/25/explaining-the-updater/
updater:
  # Optional, allows Home Assistant developers to focus on popular components.
  # include_used_components: true

# Discover some devices automatically
discovery:

# Allows you to issue voice commands from the frontend in enabled browsers
conversation:

# Enables support for tracking state changes over time
history:

# View all events in a logbook
logbook:

# Enables a map showing the location of tracked devices
map:

# Track the sun
sun:

# Switches
switch:
  - platform: tellstick

# Sensors
sensor:
  # Weather prediction
  - platform: yr
  #Temp
  - platform: tellstick

# Text to speech
tts:
  - platform: google_translate
    service_name: google_say

# Tellstick
tellstick:
  host: core-tellstick
  port: [50800, 50801]
  
#Volkswagen Car Net integration
volkswagencarnet:
  username: not this
  password: or this
  scan_interval:
    minutes: 2
  name:
    wvwzzz1234567812356: 'Passat GTE' 

#Z-WAve
#zwave:
 # usb_path: /dev/ttyACM0
  #usb_path: /dev/ttyAMA0

# Device Tracker
#device_tracker:
#  - platform: asuswrt
#    host: 192.168.1.1
#    username: admin
#    password: nor this
#    protocol: telnet
#    new_device_defaults:
#      track_new_devices: True
#      hide_if_away: False
device_tracker: 
  - platform: nmap_tracker
    interval_seconds: 15
    consider_home: 00:05:00
    hosts: 
      - 192.168.1.150-254
      - 192.168.1.10
      - 192.168.1.11
    new_device_defaults:
      track_new_devices: True
      hide_if_away: False

# Cloud
cloud:

group: !include groups.yaml
automation: !include automations.yaml
script: !include scripts.yaml
#customize: !include customize.yaml

Realelwood · May 9, 2019, 4:25am

I’m using a telltick and the tellstick add-on to integrate the sensors to HA. I think that was what you meant by MQTT right?

DeadEnd · May 9, 2019, 12:27pm

The “introduction” was removed in .92 - you can remove this completely as it is no longer supported.

Okay - I had a great paragraph written on this… and then deleted it as I found the problem. You have the customize command twice in your configuration.yaml file. It appears correctly after your time_zone (I say correctly because it is within the “homeassistant:” which is correct - it must be within this section) - and then I see that it appears again at the very end of your configuration.yaml.

You need to delete this from the end of the file - it does not belong here.
Once deleted, if you want to use a customize.yaml, just uncomment it near the top.

I have no experience with the TellStick, but from the short reading I have done, the sensor/switch configurations are saved in a file called “tellstick.conf”.
So, since the configuration.yaml looks good, I think you need to next look at the tellstick.conf to see how the sensors are setup.

Yes it is. My 433 sensors are cheap generic sensors. I had to setup a RTL SDR with rtl_433 and generate MQTT messages to integrate with Home Assistant. It looks like the Tellstick has this all built in - so you can ignore my MQTT comments until someone with Tellstick experience can say otherwise.

DeadEnd

Realelwood · May 9, 2019, 7:54pm

So i sorted out the errors, deleting the introduction part and just call the customize.yaml
once(configuration.yaml has been the same for a while and worked like this in the past)

When ever i have the sensors in customize.yaml with a friedly name they randomly appear on reboot or not. None are discovered even if i physically move them. As soon as i take out the customize.yaml from configuration.yaml or just remove the sensors from (with #) customize.yaml they appear 100 % every time, if i restart them or change the channel they appear immediately once they start to transpond.

Tellstick.conf looks like this and have been like this for the last months, this is only switches/lights no sensors since they just appear in dev-state

{
  "devices": [
    {
      "id": 1,
      "name": "golvlampa_vr",
      "protocol": "fuhaote",
      "model": "codeswitch",
      "code": "1100000100"
    },
    {
      "id": 2,
      "name": "fonster_kok",
      "protocol": "risingsun",
      "model": "selflearning",
      "house": "21234",
      "unit": "2"
    },
    {
      "id": 3,
      "name": "fonster_vrum",
      "protocol": "arctech",
      "model": "selflearning-dimmer",
      "house": "21235",
      "unit": "2"
    },
    {
      "id": 4,
      "name": "tv_bank",
      "protocol": "fuhaote",
      "model": "codeswitch",
      "code": "1100010000"
    },
    {
      "id": 5,
      "name": "fonster_tvattstuga",
      "protocol": "fuhaote",
      "model": "codeswitch",
      "code": "1100001000"
    },
    {
      "id": 6,
      "name": "bank_hall",
      "protocol": "arctech",
      "model": "selflearning-switch",
      "house": "21236",
      "unit": "2"
    },
    {
      "id": 7,
      "name": "fonster_sovrum",
      "protocol": "risingsun",
      "model": "selflearning",
      "house": "21237",
      "unit": "2"
    }
  ]
}

DeadEnd · May 10, 2019, 2:31am

Good investigation… I would say then that your problem is in the customize.yaml file.
If you want to share it (I don’t think I see it above) we can take a look and see if anything stands out.

Realelwood · May 10, 2019, 4:11am

Here’s customize.yaml, that has worked in the past. Here shown in the state that makes the sensors update.

#sensor.32_temperature:
#  friendly_name: TStuga
#sensor.123_temperature:
#  friendly_name: Kök
#sensor.111_temperature:
#  friendly_name: Ute
#sensor.231_temperature:
#  friendly_name: Uterum

sensor.telldus_tzwp_102_plug_in_switch_power:
  friendly_name: LVP Power
  
switch.bank_hall:
  friendly_name: Bänk hall
switch.fonster_kok:
  friendly_name: Köksfönster
switch.fonster_tvattstuga:
  friendly_name: Tvättstuga
switch.golvlampa_vr:
  friendly_name: Golvlampa Vardagsrum
switch.tv_bank:
  friendly_name: TV Bänk
switch.fonster_sovrum:
  friendly_name: Sovrumsfönster
light.fonster_vrum:
  friendly_name: Vardagsrumsfönster

Realelwood · May 13, 2019, 12:58pm

Problem solving continues with none to limited success. I still always(at least 95% of the time) get my neighbors sensor transmissions.
When i use the gateway with a laptop and just the Telldus service application i get all sensors all the time, when sensors channel is changed it gets registered wtithin a minute in the application on the laptop.

I’ve tried the following and achieved the follwing:

Fresh install with just tellstick add-on, then copied my old .yaml files (configuration, groups, automations, and so on).
- My sensors is not showing up rebooted a couple of times, removed the sensors from customize.yaml, sensors randomly showing up, whatever is there at startup is being read, none appear after a while, changing channels on discovered sensors has no effect.
Fresh install with tellstick add-on, manually adding the settings needed to make tellstick add-on work.
- Initial boot seems fine, tried a couple of reboot some sensors drops out, changing channels has no effect or moving sensors around the house.
Fresh install on another RPi 2B, same as above
- Same behaviour.

Will try an older version of HA next to see if the behaviour is the same.