ESP8266 and MicroPython - Part 2
+ + + + + +
+So, part 1 of ESP8266 and MicroPython was pretty lame, right? Instead of getting information out of Home Assistant we are going a step forward and create our own sensor which is sending details about its state to a Home Assistant instance.
Beside HTTP POST requests, MQTT is the quickest way (from the author’s point of view) to publish information with DIY devices.
+ +You have to make a decision: Do you want to pull or to poll? For slowly changing values like temperature it’s perfectly fine to wait a couple of seconds to retrieve the value. If it’s a motion detector the state change should be available instantly. This means the sensor must take initiative.
+ +An example for pulling is aREST. This is a great way to work with the ESP8266 based units and the Ardunio IDE.
+ +MQTT
+ +You can find a simple examples for publishing and subscribing with MQTT in the MicroPython library overview in the section for umqtt.
+ +The example below is adopted from the work of @davea as we don’t want to re-invent the wheel. The configuration feature is crafty and simplyfies the code with the usage of a file called /config.json
which stores the configuration details. The ESP8266 device will send the value of a pin every 5 seconds.
import machine
+import time
+import ubinascii
+import webrepl
+
+from umqtt.simple import MQTTClient
+
+# These defaults are overwritten with the contents of /config.json by load_config()
+CONFIG = {
+ "broker": "192.168.1.19",
+ "sensor_pin": 0,
+ "client_id": b"esp8266_" + ubinascii.hexlify(machine.unique_id()),
+ "topic": b"home",
+}
+
+client = None
+sensor_pin = None
+
+def setup_pins():
+ global sensor_pin
+ sensor_pin = machine.ADC(CONFIG['sensor_pin'])
+
+def load_config():
+ import ujson as json
+ try:
+ with open("/config.json") as f:
+ config = json.loads(f.read())
+ except (OSError, ValueError):
+ print("Couldn't load /config.json")
+ save_config()
+ else:
+ CONFIG.update(config)
+ print("Loaded config from /config.json")
+
+def save_config():
+ import ujson as json
+ try:
+ with open("/config.json", "w") as f:
+ f.write(json.dumps(CONFIG))
+ except OSError:
+ print("Couldn't save /config.json")
+
+def main():
+ client = MQTTClient(CONFIG['client_id'], CONFIG['broker'])
+ client.connect()
+ print("Connected to {}".format(CONFIG['broker']))
+ while True:
+ data = sensor_pin.read()
+ client.publish('{}/{}'.format(CONFIG['topic'],
+ CONFIG['client_id']),
+ bytes(str(data), 'utf-8'))
+ print('Sensor state: {}'.format(data))
+ time.sleep(5)
+
+if __name__ == '__main__':
+ load_config()
+ setup_pins()
+ main()
+
+Subscribe to the topic home/#
or create a MQTT sensor to check if the sensor values are published.
$ mosquitto_sub -h 192.168.1.19 -v -t "home/#"
+
+sensor:
+ - platform: mqtt
+ state_topic: "home/esp8266_[last part of the MAC address]"
+ name: "MicroPython"
+
+@davea created sonoff-mqtt. This code will work on ESP8622 based devices too and shows how to use a button to control a relay.
+