New plugin pimatic-hass

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In the series of connecting pimatic to other systems in the Home Automation eco-system I already developed the mesh plugin.
The Mesh plugin is for interconnecting one or more Pimatic systems. For example still functioning legacy plugins can stay on a legacy pi and the rest on node 10+ rpi’s.

With the pimatic-hass plugin I looked at another way of connecting Pimatic to the Home Automation eco-system. Pimatic-hass makes Pimatic devices available in Home Assistant.
The plugin is mqtt based and is using the mqtt discovery function of Home Assistant (Hass) to automaticaly add pimatic devices. For actionable devices like switch or light the Pimatic devices are synced with Home Assistant. For readonly devices the values are only exposed readable towards Home Assistant.
You can connect 1 or more Pimatic systems to 1 Home Assistant.

If you use it, please let me know what you experienced, what you are missing or is failing.

if you can’t find the plugin on the plugins page of Pimatic (there are some issues) you can add the plugin in the config by adding at the end of the plugin section

   {
      "plugin": "hass"
   }

Very cool! To be honest I’m currently thinking about switching to HASS but maybe using both in combination is the best solution

@thex using both could be a good option if you need features of Hass and don’t want to or can’t migrate Pimatic.
In this first release you need to add the devices you want to use in Hass explicit in the HassDevice. It could be more automated, but thats for later versions.

@bertreb
Hello, that sounds very interesting.
Did I understand correctly that communication is only one-way? Or is there a possibility to use it bidirectional?

The selected pimatic devices in the hass plugin device, are automatically created in Hass.
Depending on the type of device the communication can be bidirectional.
For example a Pimatic switch added to the plugin is created in Hass and when you have added de switch in the Hass Gui, the switch on/off actions in Pimatic and Hass are synchronized.
Is this what you mean?

Hi and thanks for the quick response.
That’s exactly what I wanted to know.
I haven’t dealt with HASS yet. But I think pimatic cannot take over devices from HASS for which there is no plugin in pimatic. Is that correct?

Yes, you need a plugin in Pimatic thats has the relevant attributes and actions to do the mapping between Hass and Pimatic. For device types like switch, sensor and light it is possible to map the Hass devices to Pimatic.

If you got a Hass device that should be ‘taken over’ by Pimatic, I can answer it more precise.

Due to the death of gBrigde in some weeks I was checking different possibilities to keep controlling my pimaitc system via GH. First I was willing to use a self hosted gBrigde instance, but inspired by this plugin I will firstly go the way via hass.io with the paid cloud connection. I have just some dedicated shell switches to control my system via GH. So it should fit to exactly my needs.
If it will not work as I need I can still look for the self hosted gBrigde way

Hi,
I like to give it a try, just for fun…

I have my mosquitto server running on my productive Pimatic. I haven’t specified any user or password for the moquitto. I have installed it for my ESPEasy controller years ago. I had no need for a special user with password (just for info: The long ago MQTT plugin is completely default configured).

In your hass plugin template you have the user “pimatic”. It can be changed, thats clear, but can I leave user empty in your plugin or is a user strongly required?

EDIT:
Got it to work! My fault was, that I was looking to the integration if a new device pops up…
I left the user empty and it works for me. A dummy switch from pimatic pops up in HA and can be controlled from HA.

One more question: Could it be that the user & pw within your plugin must fit to the user & pw configured in the configuration.yaml?**

You mean the mqtt settings? they should be the same for pimatic and for Hass (because its the same broker)

Yes, the MQTT setting of your plugin:

and the MQTT settings in HA:

mqttServer = broker ip address
mqttUser = username of broker
mqttPassword = password of broker
mqttPort = port of broker
discovery_prefix = discovery_prefix

Yes, I understand. But I haven’t configured any user in the MQTT broker. When I left username & password empty it works. When I put there abc & abc in HA only, it works… When I put there abc & abc in Pimatic only, it works.
Therefore my question.

A small thing I found is that the HassDevice gets not initialized for me after Pimatic restart. Device in HA is yellow and shows ‘entity not available’

After I open a save (recreate) it works and the device gets available in HA:

Strange. Setting mqtt username and password isnt complex, but if both Pimatic and Hass work without its ok. (if you use a secure wireless lan )

Wifi is secured so far. So it is okay for me…
I have update my previous post. Take a look…

Really nice plugin so far. Opens new possibilities

I will dust off the plugin knowledge and the way it works/startup with Hass.

@ortin said in New plugin pimatic-hass:

Yes, I understand. But I haven’t configured any user in the MQTT broker. When I left username & password empty it works. When I put there abc & abc in HA only, it works… When I put there abc & abc in Pimatic only, it works.
Therefore my question.

A small thing I found is that the HassDevice gets not initialized for me after Pimatic restart. Device in HA is yellow and shows ‘entity not available’

After I open a save (recreate) it works and the device gets available in HA:

I did a test with my setup. Configured a few devices. They all work bidirectional.
After restart of pimatic the devices, are still active and work as intended.
I’m using for testing hass in docker and configured the mqtt settings in configuration.yaml

Thats strange. Hmm, no idea what is wrong om my side. I will investigate further. Seems HAss is a nice addition for my setup!

Would it be somehow possible to add variables resp. variableDevices (with n variables) and buttonDevices to the supported devices?

Would it be possible to ad HeatingThermostat?
Me and coffee script are no friends, my brain can’t compute it