Integrating Meshtastic into Home Assistant brings a new level of control and monitoring to your mesh network. On this page, we'll guide you through the process of creating Meshtastic MQTT sensor entities within Home Assistant. Whether you want to keep an eye on battery levels, environmental conditions, or even receive notifications from your mesh network, these integrations provide you with the tools to make it happen.
It is highly recommended to download MQTT Explorer for analyzing the JSON threads that come across the broker. This can be downloaded here [http://mqtt-explorer.com/](http://mqtt-explorer.com/).
# With device_class: "temperature" set, make sure to use the configured unit for temperature in your HA instance.
# If you don't, then non-temperature messages will change the value of this sensor by reinterpreting the current state with the wrong unit, unless you account for it.
To make it possible for your nodes to appear in maps within Home Assistant, you will need to set up a [device_tracker](https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/device_tracker/) entity. Luckily, Home Assistant allows them to be created ad-hoc, simply by calling the `device_tracker.see` service from a script or automation.
To do this, create a new automation and use the three-dots menu to change to the "Edit in YAML" mode, and set it up like the following:
```yaml
alias: Update Node 1 location
description: Update Meshtastic node when corresponding MQTT messages are seen.
The `dev_id` within the service call determines what the `device_tracker` entity will be called, for example `device_tracker.node_1` for the above. Make sure that you have different names in this field for your different nodes, or they will all show up under the same tracker! Meshtastic represents latitude and longitude in integers, which is why they must be multiplied by `1e-7` to produce the real location.
Device trackers can also support a few different additional fields, but the one most relevant to Meshtastic usage is the battery level, which can be pulled in from the previously-created sensors as shown.
Home Assistant entities can be created for any data type that is published to MQTT. For example: altitude, latitude_i, longitude_i, time, current, and neighbors. Use the templates above as a guide to create additional entities if desired.
- In every entity, replace `msh/US/2/json/LongFast/!67ea9400` with the topic your node publishes to. In this example, `!67ea9400` refers to the node that has mqtt enabled on the mesh and is publishing to the broker.
- In every entity replace `4038675309` with the node number of the radio you wish to monitor. In this example `4038675309` is the node on the mesh with environment sensors and telemetry that I wish to observe. Node numbers can be found by monitoring the output in MQTT Explorer, listening with the MQTT addon or by using the Python CLI with `meshtastic --info`.
### Additional Nodes
Copy and paste these entities then change `name`, `unique_id`, `from`, and `states` to create entities from any additional nodes' parameters:
It is possible to have Home Assistant trigger automations based on messages or events on your mesh.
### Notifications
This example waits for a message containing @Tropho and then sends a pop-up notification to his flip phone with the message. Optionally you can have ALL messages from the mesh sent as HA notifications to your phone.
This same type of automation is very useful to trigger other actions in Home Assistant. For example, you could turn on a fan when the temperature reaches a certain value, or a play a sound on a speaker when a new message is received.
## Create a Send Message Entity
It is possible to create an input text box to send messages to your mesh from within Home Assistant.
### Input Text Helper Entity
First, create an input text helper entity. The preferred way to configure an input text is via the HA interface at Settings > Devices & Services > Helpers. Click the add button and then choose the Text option. Make a text input helper with a max length of 190 to be on the safe side. See example below:
This automation will check the send box for changes. After typing a message, either hit enter or click off the box and the automation will send a text string in JSON to the mqtt broker. Make sure to publish to a channel called "mqtt" and to update the device ID and `from` field in the example below. A field `channel` can be added to transmit on a different channel index than the primary, or a `to` field can be added with a node number to send a DM.
Add this card to your dashboard by going to Edit Dashboard -> + ADD CARD. Then search BY ENTITY for Meshtastic Send Box and check the box next to the entry. Click CONTINUE, then ADD TO DASHBOARD.
