igrill-hassio

Tutorial for establishing a connection between an iGrill temperature probe and Hass.io Home Assistant

Introduction of my Use Case

I like the iGrill device, and have invested in four probes. I do not like my being tied to the bluetooth range of my grill when using Weber's application to monitor the iGrill. I also do not like the features creeping into Weber's application that call out of my network to Weber properties nor those that require a 'Weber-ID'.

My objectives were:

• Be able to walk away from my grill and continue monitoring temperatures
• Keep data within my home network when possible
• Dockerize the iGrill monitor to ensure it never dies and make repeating installation easy

Hardware Components

• iGrill v2
• 2x Raspberry Pi 4 Model B, both running Raspbian
  • Home Assistant Raspberry Pi: The first Raspberry Pi maintains Hass.io and the Mosquitto broker
  • iGrill Monitor Raspberry Pi: The second Raspberry Pi maintains the iGrill monitoring and data publishing scripts
    • This tutorial also works on a single Raspberry Pi. I use two because my grill is not within Bluetooth range of my primary Raspberry Pi.

Step-by-Step Instructions to Configure the Broker

• Install both Docker and Docker Compose following instructions in this documentation
• Install Hass.io as a docker container following instructions in the documentation
• In the Hass.io Add-On Store, install the Mosquitto broker
  • Follow all of the documentation in the Installation and How to use sections of the documentation
  • In addition, navigate to the configuration section on the add-ons page and create a USERNAME and PASSWORD in the logins array that matches the USERNAME and PASSWORD you created for Home Assistant, as shown below:
    • While the documentation explicitly notes that this is not required, I found discussion suggesting it on Reddit and it resolved my issue.

{
  "logins": [
    {
      "username": "USERNAME",
      "password": "PASSWORD"
    }
  ],
  "anonymous": false,
  "customize": {
    "active": false,
    "folder": "mosquitto"
  },
  "certfile": "fullchain.pem",
  "keyfile": "privkey.pem",
  "require_certificate": false
}

• Test that the broker is listening for published data by following the Home Assistant MQTT testing documentation
  • Skip the first two paragraphs, and use the Developer Tools method, which is built into Home Assistant

Step-by-Step Instructions to Install Configure bendiwka's iGrill Monitor

• Install both Docker and Docker Compose following instructions in this documentation
• Create a directory with the docker and monitor configuration files in this repo by using the command git clone https://github.com/WilliamAlexanderMorrison/igrill-hassio.git
• Navigate into the igrill-hassio directory
• Open the device.yaml configuration file
  • Replace XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX with the Bluetooth MAC address of your iGrill as needed
    • I was able to obtain this in Raspbian with the command sudo hcitool lescan
  • Make any other configuration changes as desired
• Open the mqtt.yaml configuration file
  • Replace IPHOSTNAME with the IP of your Raspberry Pi with the Broker
  • Replace USERNAME to match the USERNAME you created for Home Assistant/Mosquitto broker
  • Replace PASSWORD to match the PASSWORD you created for Home Assistant/Mosquitto broker
  • Make any other configuration changes as desired
• Follow both of the troubleshooting instructions provided by bendikwa
• Reboot your Raspberry Pi
• Build the docker with the command sudo docker-compose build
  • This will create a docker container with bendiwka's iGrill Monitor repo
• Turn on your iGrill, plug in a probe
  • Also verify that no devices are already connected to it like your phone running the Weber app
• Start the docker container with the command sudo docker-compose up -d
• Test that the monitor is pushing data to the Mosquitto broker by navigating to the MQTT Developer Tools within Home Assistant, and set the Listen to a Topic to # (all) channels and Start Listening
  • You should see a temperature update and a battery update about every 20 seconds

Recommendation for Sensor Configuration and Lovelace UI/UX

• Stog's post on the Home Assistant community boards contains much inspiration and pre-written configurations
• In the Home Assistant configuration, add MQTT Sensors

sensor:
  - platform: mqtt
    state_topic: "cooking/grill/probe1"
    name: "Probe 1"
    qos: 0
    unit_of_measurement: "ºF"
  - platform: mqtt
    state_topic: "cooking/grill/probe2"
    name: "Probe 2"
    qos: 0
    unit_of_measurement: "ºF"
  - platform: mqtt
    state_topic: "cooking/grill/probe3"
    name: "Probe 3"
    qos: 0
    unit_of_measurement: "ºF"
  - platform: mqtt
    state_topic: "cooking/grill/probe4"
    name: "Probe 4"
    qos: 0
    unit_of_measurement: "ºF"
  - platform: mqtt
    state_topic: "cooking/grill/battery"
    name: "iGrill Battery"
    qos: 0
    unit_of_measurement: "%"

• Restart your Home Assistant to start picking up data from new sensors
• In the Lovelace configuration, add an entities card to your preferred view to see the sensors

views:
  - badges: []
    cards:
      - type: entities
        show_header_toggle: false
        title: Weber iGrill
        entities:
          - entity: sensor.probe_1
            icon: 'mdi:thermometer'
            secondary_info: last-changed
          - entity: sensor.probe_2
            icon: 'mdi:thermometer'
            secondary_info: last-changed
          - entity: sensor.probe_3
            icon: 'mdi:thermometer'
            secondary_info: last-changed
          - entity: sensor.probe_4
            icon: 'mdi:thermometer'
            secondary_info: last-changed
          - entity: sensor.igrill_battery
            icon: 'mdi:battery-bluetooth'
            secondary_info: last-changed
    icon: 'mdi:pig'
    path: igrill
    title: iGrill