MQTT Hub/Gateway

Hi!
I’m considering creating a Lovelace dashboard for my Homey.
Is MQTT Hub a necessity, or a “nice to have”?
What would be the alternative for getting a device on a dashboard?

I’m mostly interested in door/window status (Aqara) and thermostats/lights etc. It’s not critical to be able to change anything from the dashboard, it’s 90% meant as an overview, but of course it would be nice to just set temperature for thermostats, enable “high” setting on ventilation etc.

Yes, MQTT Hub & MQTT Client on Homey, and MQTT Broker on Homey, or HA, or Synology NAS, or even (not preferrable) a cloud service f.i.
I just made a Dutch step-by-step manual by the way, maybe it is of any use with https://translate.google.com/.

I’ll be using Docker on my QNAP for HA and MQTT broker.

But what is the reason for using MQTT hub? How would it work without it, with just MQTT Client?

Is the alternative to have a flow for each single device when it is updated?

I also got this problem, my labels are all the same.

Did you fix this and how did you do this?

The hub sends f.i. the Homey devices and their data to MQTT Client a.f.a.i.k.
If you disable it, nothing gets updated in HA anylonger.

All clients connect to a hub (somewhere)

The MQTT holds the device states and a command interface for your devices from both systems in a format both HA and Homey understand.

So it’s an alternative to automations on both end with subscriptions etc?

MQTT is just a link between the two. Kind of like an intermediary relay device or mini data base that issues events when relevant data changes value

I’ve only used MQTT broker and client directly, that’s why I’m asking. But it seems like MQTT Hub/Gateway removes the hassle with having to create a flow for every MQTT signal you might want to send out, and maybe more so the syncing of Homey and HA which could be a lot of flows to get working.

Can’t wait to finally get my Homey Pro 2023 now and get this all set up.

Is there any possibility to set a device as:

"energy": {
"cumulative": true
},

This would make me able to add my powermeters as smartmeters/powermeters and not show up as load in Homey :slight_smile:

Maybe it works when you use a helper callled ‘Utility meter’ for your meter sensor.


Maybe then it presents itself as cumulative meter in mqtt.

Alternative: it is possible when you add a power meter sensor using the community Home Assistant app

1 Like

Hello,
after upgrade to early 23 version all MQTT devices are unavailable. Seems, that it’s just a issue with devices, because hub is correctly publishing messages and also updating values (via /set message).

Any advice?

Hello @HarriedeGroot can you please check it - seems MQTT devices are not working at all on Early 2023 version. This is quite important feature I used. My homey is currently quite useless for me :frowning:

@Zimo I don’t seem to have a problem. I checked my installation with MQTT Explorer on Windows.

  • Can you please specify what is not working with what?
  • Also: on which version of which app are you.

all MQTT devices are unaviable:
image
image

when I try to add new device - It’s stuck on this screen:
image

Looks like the MQTT app is not started fully - this would be my first guess from the screenshot you posted. Maybe something else but this would be my initial investigation: why is the app not started…

from my perspective app looks running

it might be, that it partially running, but ho do I make it fully running?

Try reinstall. I have mqtt client 3.0.0 and mqtt hub 3.5.5.

And the log is empty?

on Errors and Warnings level - no log info,
on Debug level only messages from sensors and some startup messages when restarted app - no error or indication why it’s not running.

No info about those devices or why I cannot create new MQTT devices…