Using Home Assistant with MQTT - how do I get the actual overall status? (i.e. red/green/yellow) that I'd see on my generator itself?

[Ken7382]

I know the interface itself has this feature. When you open the web interface if there's something going on (check battery, etc.) it will show, but I'd like to understand how I can figure out what color the little LED's are on the generator itself? I want to use Home Assistant to use automations that will change colors of an RGB bulb letting me know the status. My generator is situated where it's not easy to see the LED's on the box itself and I have plenty of RGB bulbs laying around.

I did read through some threads and it appears there's a status of sorts under the /status/engine topic but I'm not sure if that's the right thing to use or not. Any suggestions?

I know the web interface does this from this portion of the documentation: https://github.com/jgyates/genmon/wiki/1----Software-Overview#genservpy-web-applicationoptional

And I found this thread: #1151 (comment) explaining the colors but how do I get that from MQTT?

Gold / Yellow - Service Due
Green - Switch in Auto / Ready
Red - Alarm
Blue - Exercise
Black - Switch Off
Gray - Running in Manual
Dark Green (Blue / Green ) Running

Generator is an older (2012) Nexus controller 14kW unit.

I'm new to Home Assistant and MQTT, but I managed to get this far:

[jgyates]

The color of the LEDs on the controller is not reported over modbus so genmon does not have this info.

genmon does not keep track of colors only the generator state. The web interface decides the colors so only the state, not the color is passed from genmon to MQTT.

the colors of the web interface menu you listed above are based on logic inside the web interface based on a one word status

You can get a one line status with this command:

http://192.168.1.10:8000/cmd/getbase

This will return one of the following:

  SERVICEDUE, ALARM, EXERCISING, RUNNING, RUNNING-MANUAL, OFF, MANUAL or READY

These values determine the color of the menu in the web interface. Not all controllers support all states, but Nexus/Evolution do.

Let me know if you have any other questions or if this does not answer your questions.

[Ken7382]

PERFECT!!! This is exactly what I needed; I added the following to my configuration.yaml to create an entity within HA (bypassing MQTT entirely, which is fine) - this checks that status every minute.

Now I have an entity that shows "READY" and I can use that in an automation to make a bulb change color to whatever I want based on that response. (Obviously, put your own IP address where the x's are.)

sensor:
  - platform: rest
    scan_interval: 60
    name: Generator Status
    unique_id: gen_status
    resource: http://xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx:8000/cmd/getbase
    value_template: "{{ value_json }}"

Thank you!!

[jgyates]

Great! Thanks for posting your config info.

[Ken7382]

Here's my YAML code for having an entity card on a dashboard too, which changes colors of the icon according to the status:

type: entity
entity: sensor.generator_status
card_mod:
  style: |
    :host {
      --card-mod-icon-color:
        {% if is_state('sensor.generator_status','READY') %}
          green;
        {% elif is_state('sensor.generator_status','SERVICEDUE') %}
          yellow;
        {% elif is_state('sensor.generator_status','ALARM') %} 
          red;
        {% elif is_state('sensor.generator_status','RUNNING') %} 
          orange;
        {% elif is_state('sensor.generator_status','RUNNING-MANUAL') %} 
          purple;
        {% elif is_state('sensor.generator_status','MANUAL') %} 
          brown;
        {% elif is_state('sensor.generator_status','OFF') %} 
          gray;
        {% else %}
          red;
        {% endif %};
     } 

Comes out looking like this, and the color changes according to status (feel free to change colors.)

[jgyates]

Thanks for the info