New home-assistant add-on retrieving radio data sent from emontx

[alexandrecuer]

To test more the correct behaviour of the emoncms home assistant add-on, I’ve created another add-on to retrieve radio packets from emontx

Right now, it works only with old RFM69 devices such as emonpi or RFM69PI using ttyAMA0

The repo is here : GitHub - Open-Building-Management/emontx_sniffer: home-assistant addon sniffer for devices like openergymonitor emontx

To install it in home-assistant, just add the repo path to the add-on store and install the tool

Everything is explained in the doc of the addon, but if you are running a SD card written with Raspberry Pi - Home Assistant or with Raspberry Pi - Home Assistant, you will have to deactivate the bluetooth

The configuration is very easy, you only give the username/password of the broker running on the emoncms add-on…

Critics and feedback are welcome. It is actually just a proof of concept, in order to see how to run in container a tool like emonhub without being in privileged mode…for ttyAMA0, things are simple, it will be a little more complicated with ttyUSB* as you can connect/reconnect the device many times…but it is possible using cgroups with docker, so why not in home-assistant…

The container is build for 3 archs with the github actions : amd64/armv7/aarch64
It can work as a standalone docker container and is available on my docker profile :
https://hub.docker.com/r/alexjunk/emontx_sniffer

Best

Alex

[borpin (Brian Orpin)]

Not something I’ll use or can test, but looks really interesting

[alexandrecuer]

Ok understood, thanks @borpin

I was just wondering, what is the most common setup for energy monitoring around here ?

maybe emonpi and old RFM69 are devices from the past time and right now most of you are using the new usb key, with the Low Power Labs firmware ?

JeeLink (RFM69CW > USB) available in the shop

We’ve started stocking some JeeLink RFM69CW to USB devices in the shop. These are really useful for adding RFM receiving capability to any computer e.g to receive RF data from emonTx or emonTH We can preload the RFM2Pi firmware which has been re-compiled for the JeeLink with either the JeeLib Classic (compatibility) firmware or the new Low Power Labs firmware. To use the JeeLink with emonHub, use the following config: [[jeelink]] Type = EmonHubOEMInterfacer [[[init_setti…

It seems to be nice indeed

[borpin (Brian Orpin)]

My RFM setup is a really old RFM69 & TX 3.2 (I think) on fairly original firmware. I do also have a later TX3 connected by serial to a Pi (as a test setup) and an EmonPi (also a testbed). I’ve not tried any of the different RFM firmware options.

It needs tidying up, but I’ll probably end up with just the TX with serial/WiFi connection feeding to MQTT and my PVE emoncms.

The HA emoncms though is really interesting especially as the Wi-Fi TX4 would be my preferred setup if I was going for it from scratch. A TX4, Wi-Fi, and emoncms on HA is extremely simple and relatively cheap (compared to other options).

[alexandrecuer]

Yes, wifi tx4 is a nice option

would any of you be interested in an emonhub docker image ?

Someone asked for here :

how to run the images in standalone mode, ie out of home-assistant ? ·...

Just to know if this could be usefull ?

[alexandrecuer]

just pushed a new version tagged alpine3.18.1

GitHub - Open-Building-Management/emontx_sniffer: home-assistant addon...

added the ability to use USB dongle like JeeLink RFM69CW to USB Transceiver 433Mhz - Shop | OpenEnergyMonitor

for standalone usage, docker images are here :

https://hub.docker.com/r/alexjunk/emontx_sniffer

[ToeJamm (Alexander)]

does this mean i can free up the Rpi that was using to running EmonPi?
Its recieving data from an EmonTX

[borpin (Brian Orpin)]

Yes and no. You need the additional dongle and the add-on is a bit experimental so if you are willing to fiddle and risk data loss, yes. If the data is important to you, then I’d leave alone (ain’t broke, don’t fix).

Possibly also depends on what you are running HA on as well.

[alexandrecuer]

The emoncms addon is not so experimental but the emontx_sniffer yes…datas streamed through MQTT are not really organized in the emonhub way, it is something more raw…

Anyway, there is a emonhub docker container which could be a drop in replacement but it is not packaged as a addon in home assistant…but for docker compose users, it can be something interesting…

[denis.moro]

hi, I am testing emontx_sniffer .

from log I can see that RF packets are received… but no mqtt threads are wrotten, see logs:

2026-01-25 18:28:08,554 INFO     MQTT_HOST : 192.168.1.13 - MQTT_PORT : 1883


2026-01-25 18:28:08,612 INFO     timezone Europe/Rome fixed

2026-01-25 18:28:14,819 INFO     no end of line received - incomplete packet

2026-01-25 18:29:12,575 INFO     no end of line received - incomplete packet

2026-01-25 18:29:31,193 INFO     no end of line received - incomplete packet

[denis.moro]

tested mqtt_test.py and is working, but I can’t see stream on mqtt thread

[denis.moro]

2026-01-25 18:55:13,757 DEBUG    ******************************
2026-01-25 18:55:13,757 DEBUG    b'OK 21 114 8\\r\\n'
2026-01-25 18:55:14,958 DEBUG    \*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*
2026-01-25 18:55:14,958 DEBUG    b'OK 23 183 8\\r\\n'
2026-01-25 18:55:17,360 DEBUG    \*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*
2026-01-25 18:55:17,360 DEBUG    b'OK 24 239 8\\r\\n'
2026-01-25 18:55:17,461 DEBUG    \*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*

[alexandrecuer]

so it seems to work, isn’it ?

my log is like that, with datas from emontx

******************************
2026-01-25 15:45:03,762 DEBUG    b' 134 0 0 0 152 0 0 0 89 0 0 0 85 0 0 0 111 91 186 0 184 11 184 11 184 11 184 11 184 11 0 0 0 0 (-69) \r\n'
2026-01-25 15:47:12,298 DEBUG    ******************************
2026-01-25 15:47:12,298 DEBUG    b'OK 8 35 1 0 0 47 1 0 0 137 0 0 0 151 0 0 0 89 0 0 0 85 0 0 0 140 91 186 0 184 11 184 11 184 11 184 11 184 11 0 0 0 0 (-74) \r\n'
2026-01-25 15:47:32,062 DEBUG    ******************************
2026-01-25 15:47:32,062 DEBUG    b'OK 8 33 1 0 0 240 1 0 0 136 0 0 0 242 0 0 0 89 0 0 0 87 0 0 0 245 91 186 0 184 11 184 11 184 11 184 11 184 11 0 0 0 0 (-73) \r\n'
2026-01-25 15:48:11,582 DEBUG    ******************************

you log is with datas from emonth ?

[denis.moro]

I am receiving right RF packets, but no mqtt packets are generated.

I put mosquito on listening for my “test” threat

[denis.moro]

mqtt_test is working fine…

[alexandrecuer]

did you configure the broker ?

[denis.moro]

yes , username and password are empty, but mqtt_test is working

[alexandrecuer]

you expect data in emoncms addon or somewhere else ? you did not specify any MQTT_USER and PASSWORD ?
maybe you use the anonymous option in the emoncms addon conf ?
conf for the emoncms addon

usually MQTT_TOPIC is emon, except if you configure emoncms to revceive on another topic

[denis.moro]

@alexandrecuer

you expect data in emoncms addon or somewhere else ? you did not specify any MQTT_USER and PASSWORD ?

I expect data on mosquito mqtt server.

no, I did’nt specified login and password, becasue my mosquito not use it

[alexandrecuer]

this kind ?