449 OpenMQTTGateway Connects Many Things to Your Home Automation

I love 433MHz sensors because they are cheap and work over a long distance. My most complicated device is this weather station with many sensors. We also use BLE devices like the Xiaomi body scale in our bathroom. Today I will show you how to connect such devices to your smart home without hacking. And, as usual, you will learn some tricks and why the BLE proxy of Home Assistant sometimes does not work.

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[teuluPaul]

Thanks Andreas! High density information, clearly and simply explained - fantastic as always!

[TechWeb]

OpenMQTTGateway is a fantastic project. Thanks to Florian, NorthernMan54 and others I am using many 433.92Mhz RF devices in Home Assistant and controlling my 433.42Mhz radio controlled blinds. I use a standard ESP32 dev board with an attached cheap CC1101 board.

[phyro]

The wife weight filter is a clear indication that you’re a master of your craft.

[zyghom]

Thank you Andreas, great as usual.
My 2 cents:
1- people around (the community) is unbelievable, having so much time and sharing with all!
2- majority of users (of anything) NEVER change passwords or even apply one - I could easily turn off heating system of all my neighbours who just bought this winter thermostats - nobody bothered to secure it! ;-)

[dennyfox]

I bought a weather station like your original one and have been using it for several years with the Raspberry Pi/SDR gateway you documented. I have updated the SDR to one with a TXO but the reception is still a bit flakey. I have just ordered the TTGO Lora board so I can build an OpenMQTT Gateway. I'm eager to compare the results. Thanks for a great video!

[danielsmullen]

This presents a perfect solution for the b-parasite capacitive soil moisture sensor (Florian is a contributor). I was planning to set up an entire raspberry pi just to pick up the BLE sensor readings for a few plants, but there is no need for that anymore. There is no need to waste the power, space and an expensive pi. Now I can hide the BLE-MQTT gateway in a wire wart. Thank you!

[jesuschal]

Wow! What a major breakthrough for my Home Assistant 433MHz setup based on the rfcom solution. I am eager to test this promising one and so I have already ordered the LoRa device from the affiliated link.
Thank you so much Andreas for keeping it up.

[molitovv]

I could listen to you say 'MQTT' all day

[McTroyd]

Thanks for showing the MQTT Explorer! I've always found MQTT messages difficult to track via the command line. That's such a nice breakdown.

[EpicLPer]

I bought one of those Sonoff 433MHz bridges, but accidentally bought the newer, less supported by the community version and essentially got a paperweight for now. Now that you mentioned LoRa modules I'll give that a try, still have 2 sitting around!

[kyfrbtq]

yet an other GREAT video !! Well done Andreas !

[kokoscom]

hi Andreas. I have been quite busy lately, not having so much time watching your videos as i did since the beginning of your channel.. However i found this video very interesting and i will definitely try it! once again great content Andreas!

[mindshelfpro]

Awesome and timely video. I use RTL_SDR dongles on the USB ports of several OpenWRT flashed TP Link Router/APs whose primary use is Wifi range extension and secondary use as general purpose Amateur Radio listening (saving Raspberry Pis), and was going to run RTL433 on one of the APs. I also got some ESP32 boards to start ESP BT Proxy to integrate a BT Lock I received with HA.
I was actually looking into using a BT dongle on an AP and see if it was possible to setup a BT Proxy with OpenWRT since I already have 4 OpenWRT APs around the house. This Lora ESP32 alternative is enticing. Again saving Raspberry Pis and keeping the RTLSDR dongles for other projects. Thanks for the introduction to this solution!

[avejst]

Great idea to use the 433MHz "lora module" in this way
Thanks for sharing your big experiences with all of us 🙂

[wjn]

Thank you for sharing, detailed and informative. I was not aware my LoRa boards are so versatile

[hds]

Hi Andreas, thank you very much for the inspiration using OMG, an outstanding project. BTW: The older TTGO Lora32 V2.0 boards work as well with the out-of-the-box lilygo-rtl_433 binary when connecting "LoRa_DIO2" to "GPIO32" and "LoRa_DIO1 to "GPIO33" at the pin headers.

[erich]

Hello Andreas, as usual this is again a great video and great content from you.
The only small remark/experience from me: after watching your video I was like: hey as Andreas mentioned, let's get rid of my bulky DIY RFLink box attached to my HA Raspi 4. I have ordered the TTGo board and flashed it. Unfortunately I couldn't discover any of my devices (mainly PIR sensors and Remote controlled RF433 power sockets)
I went to the OMG community page and unfortunately I discovered that the chip on the TTGo (also on the Heltec Lora board) does not allow changing from rtl433 to RF / RF2 / Pilight (Switching Active Receiver Module functionality)
This is not a big deal I will buy another same board as I wanted to start playing with Lora anyway but maybe you should have mentioned it in the video (of course if you were aware).
Thanks anyway, I will setup the BLE proxy now ;)

[bertdebondt]

I've been using 2 Sonoff RF bridges some 3 years now. They work great.
Replaced internal RF chip first with Portisch firmware for RAW capturing even more RF signals.
Later replaced the Portisch with even more tuned versions of the original Portisch EFM8BB1 firmware. (for ex. Halfbakery's, ...).
I use this for some RF PIR sensors, but also to send RF commands to my garage doors (
which I first captured using RAW sniffing with the SonOff bridge of my original garage door hand remotes).

In parallel of the RAW mode (RfRaw 177), I let a custom rtl_433 Home Assistant Add-on subscribe on the RAW stream.
The rtl_433 HA Addon can decode even more complex RF protocols (like weather stations, ...),
so I can see multiple temperature sensors in the area, the publish nicely with a treeview in the MQTT broker.
So I guess it's the same RF protocol list as the OpenMQTTGateway you now decribed, but there the ESP32 chip handles it all.

The only downside of the Sonoff RF bridge is signal strength/antenne & with longer distance the receiving RF packets gets
split into more packets. (unusable to decode or resend)
That why I am curious to test out that LilyGo Lora32 433Mhz board, the
antenne looks better than the spring antenne inside of the Sonoff RF Bridge.
Also the the protocol (de)modulation (FSK, GFSK, MSK, GMSK OOK, On/off keying) is handled by the Lora RF chip.

I'm also interested to see if I can also sniff RAW RF codes with the Lora Board and are also able to (Re)Send RF (RAW) signals.
I looked at the OpenMQTTGateway documentation and I think it can also send RF signals by publishing to the MQTT broker Topic.

So I just ordered one with your affiliate link.

Anyhow, again a great informal video by the Swiss Guy 🙂

[ChristianRiesenCom]

Fantastic, this solves exactly what I wanted for some sensors I could not get in non-433 versions. Thank you fellow Eidgenosse!

[EpicLPer]

What about sending 433MHz signals btw? We got some Hofer awnings a few months ago but sadly they use some encrypted communication. I was able to sniff the signal with my Flipper but so far don't have a way to properly send it from Home Assistant due to lack of hardware.