How to test Configuration Setup Correctly

[thatstrudeau]

I am pretty new to this and have been doing everything I can to figure this out through the guide. I am mostly confident I set up everything as described in the guide. However, I literally don't know what to do next to interact with the Qolsys panel. I am technically savvy with hardware as an RF Engineer but this communication type is pretty confusing to me. Anyway, I would love some help if you could spare sometime. Thank you kindly in advanced.

[vnr1111]

I'm in the same boat, I followed the guide and added the panel. But where do I go to interact with the panel in Home Assistant?

[joshwillison]

(edited line) I had some trouble, so here's a quick checklist of what I did to get it working:

• Mosquitto Broker add-on installed
• AppDaemon add-on installed
• MQTT Integration setup for Mosquitto Broker (Settings/ Devices & Services/)
• Download Qolsys Gateway via HACS
• Enable appdaemon apps discovery setting in HACS (Settings/ Devices & Services/)
• add a home assistant user (not person) for appdaemon to use to connect to Mosquitto broker
• Edit: \hassio\config\appdaemon\ appdaemon.yaml to include MQTT plugin and username/password of user abover
• Edit app.yaml to include the qolsys_panel
• Reboot HA
• check appdaemon and mosquitto logs for errors, but also to see if a connection is established. If all good here, the rest in on the IQ panel
• AppDaemon logs will be stuck on 'Establishing Connection' which is a little confusing because it appears as though the connection was succesfully establishing
• Settings/ Devices & Services/ MQTT check here for entities

(edited line) -I plan on combing through these integrations to properly secure them now that it is working

[thatstrudeau]

@joshwillison, this is what you did to get everything working?

[vnr1111]

@joshwillison

I had some trouble, so here's a quick checklist:

• Mosquitto Broker add-on installed
• AppDaemon add-on installed
• MQTT Integration setup for Mosquitto Broker (Settings/ Devices & Services/)
• Download Qolsys Gateway via HACS
• Enable appdaemon apps discovery setting in HACS (Settings/ Devices & Services/)
• add a home assistant user (not person) for appdaemon to use to connect to Mosquitto broker
• Edit: \hassio\config\appdaemon\ appdaemon.yaml to include MQTT plugin and username/password of user abover
• Edit app.yaml to include the qolsys_panel
• Reboot HA
• check appdaemon and mosquitto logs for errors, but also to see if a connection is established. If all good here, the rest in on the IQ panel
• AppDaemon logs will be stuck on 'Establishing Connection' which is a little confusing because it appears as though the connection was succesfully establishing
• Settings/ Devices & Services/ MQTT check here for entities

Thank you! this worked!

The issue I had was these two things in your list:

• add a home assistant user (not person) for appdaemon to use to connect to Mosquitto broker
• Edit: \hassio\config\appdaemon\ appdaemon.yaml to include MQTT plugin and username/password of user abover

So I created a new user in HA, and then I googled how to edit the appdaemon.yaml file to include MQTT, and copied this code:

plugins:
HASS:
type: hass
MQTT:
type: mqtt
namespace: mqtt # needed
verbose: True
client_host: core-mosquitto
client_port: 1883
client_id: localad
client_user: usermqtt newuser here
client_password: passmqtt newuser here
event_name: MQTT_MESSAGE # the event you will listen in your module
client_topics: NONE

Then I rebooted my Qolsys panel to allow control4 - and it connected! Thanks!

[joshwillison]

@joshwillison, this is what you did to get everything working?

Yes, I got it working. In my haste to come up with the bullet points in an attempt to provide assistance here, I left out that critical detail.

[joshwillison]

@joshwillison

I had some trouble, so here's a quick checklist:

• Mosquitto Broker add-on installed
• AppDaemon add-on installed
• MQTT Integration setup for Mosquitto Broker (Settings/ Devices & Services/)
• Download Qolsys Gateway via HACS
• Enable appdaemon apps discovery setting in HACS (Settings/ Devices & Services/)
• add a home assistant user (not person) for appdaemon to use to connect to Mosquitto broker
• Edit: \hassio\config\appdaemon\ appdaemon.yaml to include MQTT plugin and username/password of user abover
• Edit app.yaml to include the qolsys_panel
• Reboot HA
• check appdaemon and mosquitto logs for errors, but also to see if a connection is established. If all good here, the rest in on the IQ panel
• AppDaemon logs will be stuck on 'Establishing Connection' which is a little confusing because it appears as though the connection was succesfully establishing
• Settings/ Devices & Services/ MQTT check here for entities

Thank you! this worked!

The issue I had was these two things in your list:

• add a home assistant user (not person) for appdaemon to use to connect to Mosquitto broker
• Edit: \hassio\config\appdaemon\ appdaemon.yaml to include MQTT plugin and username/password of user abover

So I created a new user in HA, and then I googled how to edit the appdaemon.yaml file to include MQTT, and copied this code:

plugins: HASS: type: hass MQTT: type: mqtt namespace: mqtt # needed verbose: True client_host: core-mosquitto client_port: 1883 client_id: localad client_user: usermqtt newuser here client_password: passmqtt newuser here event_name: MQTT_MESSAGE # the event you will listen in your module client_topics: NONE

Then I rebooted my Qolsys panel to allow control4 - and it connected! Thanks!

Glad you got it working!

[thatstrudeau]

@joshwillison, this is what you did to get everything working?

Yes, I got it working. In my haste to come up with the bullet points in an attempt to provide assistance here, I left out that critical detail.

Awesome. Thank you so much. I’m going to give this a go. I appreciate you’re assistance.

[thatstrudeau]

Super delayed. I think I got it working but not sure how to interact with the panel from HA. I tried to make a card in my overview tab to control it but the entity doesn't show up. How do I interact with the panel with HA? I'd consider myself a noob to all this so sorry if I'm asking something obvious here.

[joshwillison]

Super delayed. I think I got it working but not sure how to interact with the panel from HA. I tried to make a card in my overview tab to control it but the entity doesn't show up. How do I interact with the panel with HA? I'd consider myself a noob to all this so sorry if I'm asking something obvious here.

The panel shows up under Devices & Services/ MQTT/ Qolsys Panel. From there you can see all of the sensors that are part of the system. Depending on what you are trying to do, I would use this to look up the entity ID, and then in your Dashboard, pick a card and enter that entity ID. The other way to go about it would be again navigate to the see all of the sensors, and in some cases there will be a 'add to Dashboard' button.

[thatstrudeau]

Ah okay. Looks like I need to work on my MQTT then as the only thing that shows up in Devices & Services / MQTT is core-mosquito. I'll work on that. Thank you for the feedback.