Pilight

Pilight is a modular and open source solution to communicate with 433 MHz devices and runs on various small form factor computers. A lot of common protocols are already available.

This pilight hub connects to the pilight-daemon via a socket connection to receive and send codes. Thus Home Assistant does not have to run on the computer in charge of the RF communication.

The received and supported RF codes are put on the event bus of Home Assistant and are therefore directly usable by other integrations (e.g., automation). Additionally a send service is provided to send RF codes.

There is currently support for the following device types within Home Assistant:

• Binary Sensor
• Sensor
• Switch
• Light

Configuration

To integrate pilight into Home Assistant, add the following section to your configuration.yaml file:

# Example configuration.yaml entry
pilight:

In this example only received RF codes using a daycom or Intertechno protocol are put on the event bus and only when the device id is 42. For more possible settings please look at the receiver section of the pilight API.

A full configuration sample could look like the sample below:

# Example configuration.yaml entry
pilight:
  host: 127.0.0.1
  port: 5000
  send_delay: 0.4
  whitelist:  # optional
    protocol:
      - daycom
      - intertechno
    id:
      - 42

Binary Sensor

The pilight binary sensor platform implements the pilight hub binary sensor functionality. There are two types of Pilight binary sensor configuration: a normal sensor which sends the on and off cyclical state and a trigger sensor which sends only a trigger when an event happened (for example lots of cheap PIR motion detectors).

To enable a Pilight binary sensor in your installation, add the following to your configuration.yaml file:

# Example configuration.yaml entry
binary_sensor:
  - platform: pilight
    variable: "state"

Full example

A full configuration example could look like this:

# Example configuration.yaml entry
binary_sensor:
  - platform: pilight
    name: "Motion"
    variable: "state"
    payload:
      unitcode: 371399
    payload_on: "closed"
    disarm_after_trigger: true
    reset_delay_sec: 30

Sensor

This pilight sensor platform for 433 MHz devices uses a value in the message payload as the sensor value. Unique identifiers (e.g., uuid) can be set to distinguish between multiple pilight devices. To use a pilight sensor the pilight Home Assistant hub has to be set up.

To use your sensor via pilight, make sure it is supported and add the following to your configuration.yaml file:

# Example configuration.yaml entry
sensor:
  - platform: pilight
    variable: temperature
    payload:
      uuid: "0000-b8-27-eb-f447d3"

Example: Weather station

This section shows a real life example how to use values of a weather station.

# Example configuration.yaml entry
sensor:
  - platform: pilight
    name: "Temperature"
    variable: "temperature"
    payload:
      uuid: 0000-b8-27-eb-f1f72e
    unit_of_measurement: "°C"
  - platform: pilight
    name: "Humidity"
    variable: "humidity"
    payload:
      uuid: 0000-b8-27-eb-f1f72e
    unit_of_measurement: "%"
  - platform: pilight
    name: "Battery"
    variable: "battery"
    payload:
      uuid: 0000-b8-27-eb-f1f72e
    unit_of_measurement: "%"

Switch

The pilight switch platform is issuing 433 MHz commands using pilight to turn a 433 MHz device on or off. The Pilight Home Assistant hub has to be set up.

Additionally, RF commands can be defined that trigger this switch to turn on and off. This allows you to also use the remote shipped with your 433 MHz switch without mixing up the Home Assistant states. You can even define several on/off commands, thus several RF remotes to toggle this switch.

To be really sure that Home Assistant knows the actual state of your device it is recommended to use the RF remote with codes unknown to any of your 433 MHz devices. Thus you use the remote to trigger this switch to send the correct RF code to the device.

To define a Pilight switch, add the following lines to your configuration.yaml:

# Example configuration.yaml entry
switch:
  - platform: pilight
    switches:
      Bed light:
        on_code:
          protocol: intertechno_old
          'on': 1
        off_code:
          protocol: intertechno_old
          'off': 1

Variables for the different codes (on_code and off_code):

• protocol (Required): Protocol to use, e.g., intertechno_old or daycom.
• systemcode (Optional): The systemcode of the device.
• unit (Optional): The unit to use (is equivalent to pilight-send --unit).
• unitcode (Optional): The unitcode to use (is equivalent to pilight-send --unitcode).
• id (Optional): ID of the device
• state (Optional): 'on' or 'off' has to be in apostrophes to be parsed correctly.
• ‘off’ (Optional): 1 or 0
• ‘on’ (Optional): 1 or 0

For possible code entries, look at the pilight API. All commands allowed by pilight-send can be used. Which means that if, for a certain protocol, there are different parameters used, you should be able to replace the variables above by the proper ones required by the specific protocol. When using the elro_800_switch or mumbi protocol, for example, you will have to replace the variable unit with unitcode or there will be errors occurring.

Variables for the different receive codes (on_code_receive and off_code_receive):

• echo (Optional) Set to true if the on-/off-code should be sent if the given code was received.

This is useful if you have paired your sender directly with the receiver to prevent sending the signal twice.

Examples

switch:
  - platform: pilight
    switches:
      Bed light:
        on_code:
          protocol: intertechno_old
          unit: 3
          id: 4
          'on': 1
        off_code:
          protocol: intertechno_old
          unit: 3
          id: 4
          'off': 1
        on_code_receive:
          protocol: daycom
          systemcode: 14462
          unit: 6
          id: 34
          state: "on"
        off_code_receive:
          protocol: daycom
          systemcode: 14462
          unit: 6
          id: 34
          state: "off"

Light

Pilight dimmer devices, which can have different brightness values, can be used as a light. The configuration parameters are the same for dimmers and switches, but dimmers support a minimum and maximum dimming level.

The dimlevel_min and dimlevel_max settings are to be set in the range of 0 to 15, as used by pilight. Any dimming performed by Home Assistant (most likely in a 0 to 100 range) will be converted as a percentage of the available configured range in Pilight.

Example

light:
  - platform: pilight
    lights:
      test2:
        dimlevel_min: 2
        dimlevel_max: 14
        on_code:
          protocol: kaku_dimmer
          id: 23298822
          unit: 10
          'on': 1
        off_code:
          protocol: kaku_dimmer
          id: 23298822
          unit: 10
          'off': 1
        on_code_receive:
          protocol: kaku_dimmer
          id: 23298822
          unit: 10
          state: "on"
        off_code_receive:
          protocol: kaku_dimmer
          id: 23298822
          unit: 10
          state: "off"

Troubleshooting

• A list of tested RF transceiver hardware is available here. This might be useful before buying.
• Sending commands is simple when the protocol is known by pilight, but receiving commands can be rather difficult. It can happen that the code is not correctly recognized due to different timings in the sending hardware or the RF receiver. If this happens follow these steps:

1. Install pilight from source (do not worry that is very easy) and only activate the protocols you are expecting in the pop up menu. This reduces false positives.
2. Check the real timings of your device + RF receiver by running pilight-debug. Remember the pulslen parameter.
3. Go to the libs/pilight/protocols/433.92 subfolder of the pilight source code and open the .c file of your protocol. Search for MIN_PULSE_LENGTH, MAX_PULSE_LENGTH and AVG_PULSE_LENGTH. Change the pulse lengths to match your measured one. Recompile and install pilight by re-running $ sudo ./setup.sh.