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