Integration

This page describes how to configure home automation applications (like Home Assistant and OpenHab) to integrate with them and control devices connected to UniGateway.

Home Assistant

The easiest way to integrate UniGateway is to use Home Assistant MQTT discovery. UniGateway will automatically broadcast all devices' configuration under "homeassistant/" topic when connected to MQTT broker. All you need to do is to:

• enable MQTT in UniGateway by setting environment variable GATEWAY_MQTT_ENABLED to true (more about configuration here)
• enable MQTT integration in Home Assistant as described in the Home Assistant documentation.

After UniGateway start, you should be able to see all the UniGateway configured devices as devices and entities in Home Assistant.

If you want to disable broadcasting the Home Assistant configuration to MQTT, set environment variable HOMEASSISTANT_ENABLED to false (see system configuration for details).

OpenHab

OpenHab MQTT Binding supports Home Assistant MQTT discovery. UniGateway will automatically broadcast all devices' configuration under "homeassistant/" topic when connected to MQTT broker.

If you want to disable broadcasting Home Assistant configuration to MQTT, set environment variable HOMEASSISTANT_ENABLED to false (see system configuration for details).

Although OpenHab supports Homie convention 3.0.1 which is followed by UniGateway - using Home Assistant MQTT discovery gives more detailed configuration automatically.

General communication

UniGateway can work as the MQTT gateway. This means you can integrate it to any home automation platform which supports MQTT devices. Additionally, it supports Home Assistant MQTT discovery feature which is also supported in OpenHab MQTT binding.

UniGateway follows Homie convention 3.0.1 for MQTT communication. Homies MQTT topic layout follows the pattern homie/device/node/property.

Device is a name of your UniGateway instance (see how to set name in configuration).

Node is a unique string identifier of the sensor/controller connected to UniGateway (id in configuration).

Property can be a "temperature" when reading value from temperature sensor module or "state" in case of PIR motion sensor.

Examples:

• homie/MyGateway/workshop_bme/temperature for reading temperature from BME280 on the id = "workshop_bme"
• homie/MyGateway/kitchen_bme/humidity for reading humidity from BME280 on the id = "kitchen_bme"
• homie/MyGateway/wardrobe_motion/state for reading motion sensor state on the id = "wardrobe_motion" (ON if motion has started, OFF otherwise)

When device supports setting a value (e.g. relay), desired value should be sent to homie/device/node/property/set topic

Example:

• send ON to homie/MyGateway/wordrobe_light/state/set to switch on light connected to relay on id = "wardrobe_light"