Successfully Integrating Modbus Sensors with Home Assistant

General
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I’ve recently had a lot of fun integrating my Modbus sensors with Home Assistant, and I wanted to share my experience in case anyone else is looking to do something similar. I’ve been working with a Siemens LOGO! system, and while it was great to get the data in, I was a bit stuck on how to format it properly within Home Assistant. After some research and tinkering, I found a solution that works perfectly for my setup.

Initially, I was reading the raw decimal values from the LOGO!, which gave me the time data but not in a format that was immediately useful. For example, the sunrise and sunset times were coming through as decimal numbers, which I needed to convert into something more readable. I ended up using a combination of the Modbus platform and a custom template sensor to handle the conversion. This way, I could take the raw decimal value and format it into a human-readable time string like ‘07:07’.

Here’s a quick breakdown of what I did:

  1. Configured the Modbus Sensor: I set up the sensors to read the holding registers where the time data was stored. This involved specifying the address, input type, and scan interval in my configuration.yaml file.

  2. Created a Template Sensor: Using a template sensor, I wrote a lambda function to convert the decimal value into a time string. This involved some basic arithmetic to split the decimal into hours and minutes.

  3. Integrated with Lovelace: Once the data was properly formatted, I added it to my Lovelace dashboard. It’s now a breeze to glance at my sunrise and sunset times without having to do any mental math!

The best part about this setup is how customizable it is. If you’re working with similar systems, you can easily adapt this method to suit your needs. Whether you’re dealing with time values, temperatures, or something else entirely, the principle remains the same: read the raw data, process it, and display it in a way that makes sense for your home automation setup.

I’d love to hear if anyone else has tackled similar projects or has tips for making the most out of their Modbus integrations. Happy automating! :rocket: