Remote access of Zwave stick from Z-wave server

[CatmanV2]

Yes, thanks.

I can see Owntracks connecting, and also Reactor is happily showing the MQTT Entitiy. So I think that all the connections are there. The next step for me would be to get the correct configuration for Reactor to, well, react to an Owntracks message.

My only request is if anyone has an Owntracks / YAML template for reactor (which is what I think I need next) that would save me from trying to create a new one....
....which I will cheerfully do once I've read a lot more about documentation and so on.

Cheers

C

[toggledbits]

Here's a simple config for a binary sensor that is true when I am home (i.e. in the region called "Home" in Owntracks):

      entities:
        owntracks_patrick_home:
          name: "Patrick Home"
          capabilities: [ binary_sensor ]
          primary_attribute: binary_sensor.state
          type: BinarySensor
          events:
            "owntracks/user/phrs21":
              "binary_sensor.state":
                json_payload: true
                if_expr: "payload._type == 'location'"
                expr: >
                  ( first region in ( payload.inregions ?? [] ) with region == "Home": true ) ?? false

The capabilities and primary_attribute set up the entity in Reactor to hold the interpreted payload data from Owntracks' location updates. In this case, we're just going to keep a binary in/out state for the one region, nothing else.

The event configured here reacts to an incoming "owntracks/user/phrs21" topic/message (phrs21 is set in the Identification part of the connection configuration in the Owntracks app). When that topic comes in, we declare that the attribute binary_sensor.state is going to be modified according to the expression given. The json_payload: true line tells MQTTController to interpret that payload as JSON data and make a proper object out of it that the expression can then pick through easily. The if_expr expression makes sure that the assignment to the attribute is done only if the payload type is location (there are several message types that may be sent, not all of which contain region data). The expr expression itself accesses and loops through the inregions array of the payload (now object) to see if Home is an element of the array, and returns true if so. Otherwise, the expression returns false (i.e. not home). That result is assigned to the binary_sensor.state attribute..

Some details:

1. The expression fragment ( payload.inregions ?? [] ) is using the coalesce operator ??. If inregions does not exist in the payload (i.e. you are not in any region), the payload.inregions reference would result in null, so the coalesce replaces that with an empty array ([]). This prevents the expression from throwing an error if inregions is missing/null.
2. The ending fragment ?? false is a similar use of the coalesce operator because, if "Home" is not found in inregions, the first..in statement will return a null (which is what it does when nothing matches). Using the coalesce converts that null into a real false, indicating that we didn't find "Home" listed and we are therefore surely not Home.

Edit: added if_expr in the config, and explanation in the narrative.

[CatmanV2]

Thankyou, sir!

C

[toggledbits]

Also, I've just added this as a template called owntracks_in_region to build 22260 of MQTTController.

[toggledbits]

FYI, I revised the config and the narrative to make sure it doesn't try to update the sensor for message types that would never contain inregions (and thus could cause the binary sensor to spuriously go false).

[CatmanV2]

I'd like to add further regions for Owntracks. Would the reactor.yaml look like this:

        rachel_iphone:
          name: "Rachel Phone"
          topic: racheliphone
          uses_template: owntracks_in_region
          regionName: Home
          user: xxx

Would I need to duplicate everything in the above, with the different regionName? or just the last two (or three) lines?

TIA

C

[CatmanV2]

Wow. Apparently yes with a different entity name (durr)

Quite pleased with myself that I also managed to not screw the .yaml!

C

[toggledbits]

I'm sorry, I read this thread yesterday and got busy with (non-HA) stuff all day and never got back to it...

You are correct... new entity ID, new entity name, change the region name as needed, good to go.

[CatmanV2]

@toggledbits Never a problem. Good learning experience What I was afraid of was spending hours troubleshooting the wrong syntax, or the right syntax with the broken .yaml

C

[toggledbits]

Yeah, I hate dislike YAML. But the alternatives were basically JSON (even more strict and harder to read) or the Windows INI format (too brain-dead and would require a lot of contrivances to represent arrays and structures), or something else I came up with myself that would have no outside support. At least most programming editors can highlight and check YAML, and there are some good web sites for checking and editing it as well. But relief is coming...

Good online YAML editor: https://onlineyamltools.com/edit-yaml

[CatmanV2]

Thanks. All of the checkers I tried on initial setup claimed it was OK. Still wouldn't work though.

Whatever you chose is fine with me. Just another skill I need to understand

C