RTLAMR2MQTT

Platforms:

RTLAMR2MQTT is a small Python program to read your utility meter such as water, gas and energy using an inexpensive USB RTL-SDR device and send these readings to a MQTT broker to be integrated with Home Assistant or NodeRed.

Current features

• Custom parameters for rtl_tcp and rtlamr (custom_parameters config option)
• It can run rtl_tcp locally or use an external instance running somewhere else (custom_parameters config option)
• MQTT TLS support (tls_enabled config option)
• Reset USB port before open it (device_id config option)
• Format reading number. Some meters reports a flat number that should be formatted with decimals (format config option)
• Sleep after successful reading to avoid heating the CPU too much (sleep_for config option)
• Support multiple meters with one instance
• Run as an Addon for Home Assistant with Supervisor support and MQTT auto configuration
• Full sensor customization: name, state_class, device_class, icon and unit_of_measurement

Planned features

• Function to find your meter ID based on your meter reading

Changes

[!CAUTION] Major code rewrite
After a long break without working on this project, I am back with a major rewrite.
The old code was too hard to maintain.
Your old entities should be cleaned manually from your MQTT broker

[!CAUTION] This new version does not have the LISTEN MODE!!!
It is planned, but not implemented yet.

Readme starts here

What do I need?

1) You need a smart meter First and most important, you must have a "smart" water/gas/energy meter. You can find a list of compatible meters here

2) You need an USB RTL-SDR device I am using this one: NooElec NESDR Mini USB

3) You need a MQTT broker (Like Mosquitto )

4) Home Assistant is optional, but highly recommended, because it is awesome!

How it looks like?

How to run and configure?

Home Assistant Add-On:

Manually:

• Navigate to your Add-Ons (Configuration > Add-ons, Backups, & Supervisor)
• Click the Add-On Store button
• Navigate to Repositories (3 dots in the top-right corner > Repositories)
• Add this repository (https://github.com/allangood/rtlamr2mqtt) and click 'Add'
• You should now see the 'rtlamr' Add-On at the bottom of your Add-On Store. Click to install and configure.

Docker or Docker-Compose

If you are not running the add-on, you must write the rtlamr2mqtt.yaml configuration file.

Run with docker

If you want to run with docker alone, run this command:

docker run --name rtlamr2mqtt \
  -v /opt/rtlamr2mqtt/rtlamr2mqtt.yaml:/etc/rtlamr2mqtt.yaml \
  --device /dev/bus/usb:/dev/bus/usb \
  --restart unless-stopped \
  allangood/rtlamr2mqtt

Run with docker-compose

If you use docker-compose (recommended), add this to your compose file:

version: "3"
services:
  rtlamr:
    container_name: rtlamr2mqtt
    image: allangood/rtlamr2mqtt
    restart: unless-stopped
    devices:
      - /dev/bus/usb
    volumes:
      - /opt/rtlamr2mqtt/rtlamr2mqtt.yaml:/etc/rtlamr2mqtt.yaml:ro

Home Assistant utility meter configuration (sample):

To add your meters to Home Assistant, add a section like this:

utility_meter:
  hourly_water:
    source: sensor.<meter_name>
    cycle: hourly
  daily_water:
    source: sensor.<meter_name>
    cycle: daily
  monthly_water:
    source: sensor.<meter_name>
    cycle: monthly

Multiple RTL devices

If you have multiple RTL devices, you will need to specify the USB device you want to use

Using lsusb to find USB Device ID BUS:Device:

$ lsusb
Bus 008 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 005 Device 002: ID 0bda:2838 Realtek Semiconductor Corp. RTL2838 DVB-T <<< I want to use this device
Bus 005 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 002 Device 004: ID 0bda:2838 Realtek Semiconductor Corp. RTL2838 DVB-T

USB Device => 005:002

I don't know my meters ID, what can I do?

This is a planned feature...

Thanks to

A big thank you to all kind contributions!

Credits to:

RTLAMR - https://github.com/bemasher/rtlamr

RTL_TCP - https://osmocom.org/projects/rtl-sdr/wiki/Rtl-sdr

Icon by: Sound icons created by Plastic Donut - Flaticon