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.

The project is currently under heavy development!

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)
• Send an "wake up" call to a remote RTL_TCP instance before connect to it (tickle_rtl_tcp 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

• Better "LISTEN_ONLY" mode (release 2.2.0)

Noteworthy Updates

2022-05-17

• Bug fixes for remote rtl_tcp and usb_reset logic #123
• Code changes to load config file and merge defaults
• Added vscode files to test the Addon development (finally!)

2022-04-12

• REMOVED PARAMETER usb_reset
• ADDED PARAMETER device_id
• DEPRECATED Anomaly detection (looks like no one is using it and it's not very reliable)
• Changed Dockerfile: Much smaller docker container

2022-04-12

• New tls_enabled parameter to avoid confusions
• Some fixes for the Add-On regarding the TLS configuration

2022-04-04

• New TLS parameters to MQTT connection
• New parameter: USB_RESET to address problem mentioned on #98

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.

Configuration file sample

Create the config file on /opt/rtlamr2mqtt/rtlamr2mqtt.yaml for instance. The configuration must looks like this:

# -- Configuration file starts here --
# (Optional section)
general:
  # Sleep for this amount of seconds after one successful reading of every meter
  # This parameter is helpful to keep CPU usage low and the temperature low as well
  # Set this to 0 (default) to disable it
  sleep_for: 300
  # Set the verbosity level. It can be debug or info
  verbosity: debug
  # Enable/disable the tickle_rtl_tcp. This is used to "shake" rtl_tcp to wake it up.
  # For me, this started to cause the rtl_tcp to refuse connections and miss the readings.
  # This may help with a remote rtl_tcp server.
  tickle_rtl_tcp: false
  # (Optional) USB Device ID. Use lsusb to get the device ID
  # Use "single" (default) if you have only one device
  # device_id: 'single'
  device_id: '0bda:2838'

# MQTT configuration.
mqtt:
  # Whether to use Home Assistant auto-discovery feature or not
  ha_autodiscovery: true
  # Home Assistant auto-discovery topic
  ha_autodiscovery_topic: homeassistant
  # Base topic to send status and updates
  base_topic: rtlamr
  # By default, leaving host, port, user, and password unset will tell
  # rtlamr2mqtt to use the default home assistant mqtt settings for those
  # options. If needed, you can override these default settings:
  # MQTT host name or IP address.
  host: 192.168.1.1
  # MQTT port.
  port: 1883
  # TLS Enabled? (False by default)
  tls_enabled: false
  # TLS CA certificate (mandatory if tls_enabled = true)
  tls_ca: "/etc/ssl/certs/ca-certificates.crt"
  # TLS server certificate (optional)
  tls_cert: "/etc/ssl/my_server_cert.crt"
  # TLS self-signed certificate/insecure certificate (optional, default true)
  tls_insecure: true
  # MQTT user name if you have, remove if you don't use authentication
  user: mqtt
  # MQTT user password if you use one, remove if you don't use authentication
  password: my-very-strong-password

# (Optional)
# This entire section is optional.
# If you don't need any custom parameter, don't use it.
# ***DO NOT ADD -msgtype, -filterid nor -protocol parameters here***
# -d parameter is not necessary anymore if you use device_id
custom_parameters:
  # Documentation for rtl_tcp: https://osmocom.org/projects/rtl-sdr/wiki/Rtl-sdr
  rtltcp: "-s 2048000"
  # Documentation for rtlamr: https://github.com/bemasher/rtlamr/wiki/Configuration
  # If you want to disable the local rtl_tcp and use an external/remote one, you must add "-server=remote-ip-address:port" to the rtlamr section below.
  rtlamr: "-unique=true -symbollength=32"

# (Required section)
# Here is the place to define your meters
meters:
    # The ID of your meter
  - id: 7823010
    # The protocol
    protocol: scm+
    # A nice name to show on your Home Assistant/Node Red
    name: meter_water
    # (optional) A number format to be used for your meter
    format: "#####.###"
    # (optional) A measurement unit to be used by Home Assistant
    # Typical values are ft³ and m³ (use the superscript) for water/gas meters
    # and kWh or Wh for electric meters
    unit_of_measurement: "\u33A5"
    # (optional) An icon to be used by Home Assistant
    icon: mdi:gauge
    # A device_class to define what the sensor is measuring for use in the Energy panel
    # Typical values are "gas" or "energy". Default is blank.
    device_class: water
    # "total_increasing" for most meters, "total" for meters that might go
    # backwards (net energy meters). Defaults to "total_increasing" if unset.
    state_class:
  - id: 6567984
    protocol: scm
    name: meter_hydro
    unit_of_measurement: kWh
    device_class: energy
# -- End of 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 \
  -v /opt/rtlamr2mqtt/data:/var/lib/rtlamr2mqtt \
  --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
      - /opt/rtlamr2mqtt/data:/var/lib/rtlamr2mqtt

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

Finding USB Device ID

Using lsusb to find USB Device ID:

$ 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
Bus 005 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 007 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub

Device ID => 0bda:2838

Manual HA configuration (if ha_autodiscovery = false)

If you have ha_autodiscovery: false in your configuration, you will need to manually add the sensors to your HA configuration.

This is a sample for a water meter using the configuration from the sample configuration file:

sensor:
  - platform: mqtt
    name: "My Utility Meter"
    state_topic: rtlamr/meter_water/state
    unit_of_measurement: "\u33A5"

You must change meter_water with the name you have configured in the configuration YAML file (below)

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

How to run the container in LISTEN ALL METERS Mode: If you don't know your Meter ID or the protocol to listen, you can run the container in DEBUG mode to listen for everything.

In this mode, rtlamr2mqtt will not read the configuration file, this means that nothing is going to happen other than print all meter readings on screen!

docker run --rm -ti -e LISTEN_ONLY=yes -e RTL_MSGTYPE="all" --device=/dev/bus/usb:/dev/bus/usb allangood/rtlamr2mqtt

If you have multiple RTL-SDRs and wish to start the LISTEN ALL METERS mode on a specific device ID (or use other custom RTL_TCP arguments), add the argument: -e RTL_TCP_ARGS="-d <serial-number>". For example:

docker run --rm -ti -e LISTEN_ONLY=yes -e RTL_MSGTYPE="all" -e RTL_TCP_ARGS="-d 777" --device=/dev/bus/usb:/dev/bus/usb allangood/rtlamr2mqtt

Important note

If you are running the Add-On, then a MQTT topic will be created with the output and you will be able to check the output using Home Assistant. The topic is: <base_topic>/debug

Open the MQTT setting and listen in the debug topic:

LISTEN ONLY MODE with remote RTL_TCP:

You will need to define 2 enviroment variables:

• RTL_TCP_ARGS=nostart
• RTLAMR_ARGS=-server=a.b.c.d:1234

If you are using the Add-on, then these parameters will be read from the configuration file.

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