Xiaomi Gateway with several sensors - how to make it work in Pimatic?

pplucky

I have recently bought a Xiaomi Gateway from Gearbest, and now I was wondering how to make it work with Pimatic.

I already found a plugin, to make it work with Homebridge, but I would rather have it in Pimatic and make it available to Homekit via plugin Pimatic-Hap.

Has anyone managed to do it or has any plans?

Thanks in advance for any help.

wutu

Hey @pplucky
You can also use the MQTT plugin with Aqara (Xiaomi) Gateway to MQTT to integrate into Pimatic.
https://notes.jmsinfor.com/blog/post/admin/Xiaomi-Hub

OrTiN

@wutu: Can you explain a little bit more how does this work? I already use the MQTT plugin to get values from my ESP’s. Is it necessary to flash the Xiaomi gateway?

wutu

@OrTiN No, you do not have to flash. It works like a gateway between the Xiaomi gateway and the MQTT broker.
Take a look at the discussion under the article.

bioschaf

@wutu: I am currently trying to make MiHome work with pimatic following the instructions in the link you provided. Out of the box, it does not work. I do not really know where it gets wrong, I suppose the Gateway from MiHome to MQTT works, but how would I check this? And where to get the information I need to add the devices to pimatic?
Can you point me in the right direction on how to start debugging?

wutu

@bioschaf Try mosquitto_sub -t 'xiaomi/#' -v on host with mqtt broker.

bioschaf

@wutu thank you for your reply. I get the following data (testing with one motion sensor)

{'data': '{"lux":"2"}', 'model': 'sensor_motion.aq2', 'cmd': 'report', 'sid': '158d0001656f6f', 'short_id': 1418}

{'data': '{"status":"motion"}', 'model': 'sensor_motion.aq2', 'cmd': 'report', 'sid': '158d0001656f6f', 'short_id': 1418}

{'data': '{"ip":"192.168.178.28"}', 'cmd': 'heartbeat', 'model': 'gateway', 'sid': '34ce008bf45d', 'token': 'VvrxdyTExMjvs7FI', 'short_id': '0'}

If I want to create a MqttSensor device, would I use the “model” part as topic?

wutu

@bioschaf said in Xiaomi Gateway with several sensors - how to make it work in Pimatic?:

If I want to create a MqttSensor device, would I use the “model” part as topic?

No, topic can be imagined as a virtual bus over which the devices are sending data.
Here are examples of how to process data in JSON with MqttSensor.

There is another problem, this data is not a valid JSON. And the MqttSensor does not process them. The problem is in the quotation marks.
It should look like this: {"data": {"status": "motion"}, "model": "sensor_motion.aq2", "cmd": "report", "sid": "158d0001656f6f", "short_id": 1418}

Edit: You are sure that this gateway sent data in this format?

bioschaf

I just copy/pasted the console output of
mosquitto_sub -t 'xiaomi/#' -v

But I think the quotation marks can be changed in the Ruby-Script. Will try that today. If it was valid JSON, would I use the SID-Value as ID in your examples?

wutu

@bioschaf said in Xiaomi Gateway with several sensors - how to make it work in Pimatic?:

If it was valid JSON, would I use the SID-Value as ID in your examples?

Sure.

{
  "name": "Xiaomi Gateway",
  "id": " xiaomi-gateway",
  "class": "MqttSensor",
  "attributes": [
    {
      "name": "id",
      "topic": "<your topic>",
      "type": "string",
      "acronym": "sid"
    },
    {
      "name": "data.status",
      "topic": "<your topic>",
      "type": "string",
      "acronym": "status"
    }
  ]
}

bioschaf

My bad, I posted the debug output of the script instead of the mosquitto_sub command. Sorry about that!

Turns out, the sensor reports nicely
xiaomi/sensor_motion.aq2/158d0001656f6f/no_motion 600

I think I don’t get the concept of Mqtt yet. I tried to create a device following your examples, but it never receives data. Shouldn’t it work like this?

  {
      "name": "Xiaomi Test",
      "id": "xiaomi-test",
      "class": "MqttSensor",
      "attributes": [
        {
          "name": "status",
          "topic": "xiaomi/sensor_motion.aq2",
          "type": "string",
          "acronym": "data"
        }
      ]
    },

Also tried “name” : “data.status”, added the sid to the topic etc
How does the device “know” to what message from mqtt it should listen?

OrTiN

Did you try

  {
      "name": "Xiaomi Test",
      "id": "xiaomi-test",
      "class": "MqttSensor",
      "attributes": [
        {
          "name": "status",
          "topic": "xiaomi/sensor_motion.aq2/158d0001656f6f/no_motion",
          "type": "number",
          "acronym": "data"
        }
      ]
  },

In your example “600” would be return value. Next request will be an other value for sure.

bioschaf

That works. Thank you so much!

So it all depends just on the topic. The last part of the mqtt-message is the corresponding value, that can be named in whatever way I like.

The no_motion value is the number of seconds since the last detected motion. The interval roughly doubles each message.
To react to motion, the topic is
xiaomi/sensor_motion.aq2/158d0001656f6f/status
and the value “motion”

Thanks again!

OrTiN

Nice to hear! My Xiaomi Smart Home stuff is on the way, so good to know it can be simply implemented until the related plugin will be finished.

OrTiN

I’m getting console output from the python script expected format.

{u'model': u'sensor_magnet.aq2', u'cmd': u'heartbeat', u'data': u'{"voltage":3075,"status":"open"}', u'short_id': 62550, u'sid': u'158d0001daee42'}

But the mosquitto_sub command

mosquitto_sub -t 'xiaomi/#' -v

is without any result!

When I’m not filtering on xiaomi stuff, then I get results of my ESPeasy devices.

bioschaf

Did you enter the correct address (probably 127.0.0.1) in the python script?

OrTiN

Yes, I did. Tried it with 127.0.0.1, the full IP and as well with local host. I used the 118 line code. Its the at the end of the description on the side and should be the latest one.
Tried also the mihome Git code. But from this I haven’t absolutely no results.

bioschaf

Hi,
I cloned the project from git and ran setup.py
Before that, I had to install setuptools for python via pip.
After that I used the sample script from the readme of the git project. I had to adjust it a little so the modules were found.

import sys
sys.path.append("/home/pi/.local/lib/python3.5/site-packages")

import time
import paho.mqtt.client as mqtt
from mihome.connector import XiaomiConnector

time.sleep(10)

MQTT_SERVER = "127.0.0.1"
MQTT_PORT = 1883

PATH_FMT = "xiaomi/{model}/{sid}/{prop}" # short_id or sid ?

OrTiN

Hi, that was the hint I need. Now it works!

Only one question why you add a 10 seconds delay?

bioschaf

I honestly don’t know… I guess I wanted to be able to switch to the mqtt log before anything happens. It can of course be removed