MQTT Sensor

This mqtt sensor platform uses the MQTT message payload as the sensor value. If messages in this state_topic are published with RETAIN flag, the sensor will receive an instant update with last known value. Otherwise, the initial state will be undefined.

To use your MQTT sensor in your installation, add the following to your configuration.yaml file:

# Example configuration.yml entry
sensor:
  - platform: mqtt
    state_topic: "home/bedroom/temperature"

Configuration variables:

• state_topic (Required): The MQTT topic subscribed to receive sensor values.
• name (Optional): The name of the sensor. Default is ‘MQTT Sensor’.
• qos (Optional): The maximum QoS level of the state topic. Default is 0.
• unit_of_measurement (Optional): Defines the units of measurement of the sensor, if any.
• expire_after (Optional): Defines the number of seconds after the value expires if it’s not updated. Default is 0 (=never expire).
• value_template (Optional): Defines a template to extract a value from the payload.

Examples

In this section you find some real life examples of how to use this sensor.

Get battery level

If you are using the Owntracks and enable the reporting of the battery level then you can use a MQTT sensor to keep track of your battery. A regular MQTT message from Owntracks looks like this:

owntracks/tablet/tablet {"_type":"location","lon":7.21,"t":"u","batt":92,"tst":144995643,"tid":"ta","acc":27,"lat":46.12}

Thus the trick is extract the battery level from the payload.

# Example configuration.yml entry
sensor:
  - platform: mqtt
    state_topic: "owntracks/tablet/tablet"
    name: "Battery Tablet"
    unit_of_measurement: "%"
    value_template: '{{ value_json.batt }}'

Get temperature and humidity

If you are using a DHT sensor and a NodeMCU board (esp8266), you can retrieve temperature and humidity with a MQTT sensor. A code example can be found here. A regular MQTT message from this example looks like this:

office/sensor1
  {
    "temperature": 23.20,
    "humidity": 43.70
  }

Then use this configuration example to extract the data from the payload:

# Example configuration.yml entry
sensor:
  - platform: mqtt
    state_topic: 'office/sensor1'
    name: 'Temperature'
    unit_of_measurement: '°C'
    value_template: '{{ value_json.temperature }}'
  - platform: mqtt
    state_topic: 'office/sensor1'
    name: 'Humidity'
    unit_of_measurement: '%'
    value_template: '{{ value_json.humidity }}'