The Jimmerness - Adventures in Home Automation

A situation came up - my Octoprint/printer page wasn't working like it should. Power could turn on and off - not a problem Sensors would show temperatures and status - not a problem Buttons that sent commands back to Octoprint no longer work - PROBLEM The electrical power for each printer is managed by a TP Powerlink, each plug is managed by a different entity. It does not use Node-Red, and buttons for the power worked for both printers. This was not helpful. The Octoprint integration shouldn't be touching the button flows. The sensors were live, so the HA integration was probably not the case. This is using Home Assistant Core 2022.5.3. With a recent release, the developers changed things up. For example, to check your configuration.yaml and restart your server - previously it was found at Settings>System. (As a caution, the "help" text for that option still indicates the reboot is found there.) Instead, it is found under Developer Tools>YAML - both the confi...

What I didn't mention in the previous post, was the struggle to get it working. I'm not a programmer or a savant that can pick up anything. The next part is wiring up other buttons for different commands, and that means using more of the Octoprint API, as of this writing, here: https://docs.octoprint.org/en/master/api/ Current issues Ongoing problem #1: I mentioned how I got connect to work. Using the same pseudo-code, it should be super easy to execute {"command":"disconnect"}. It even pops up the same area as the command: connect did...but it doesn't disconnect. Ongoing problem #2: Extrude/Retract - this happens frequently when changing out filament, or in some cases...the print fails to start after homing on the corners. Before the homing occurred, it retracted. If I were to just start again, it would retract again! (The nozzle needs to be preheated, extruded, and then turned off.) Ongoing problem #3: Preheat to 230/turn off - as I just mentioned in #...

I'm going to start listing software versions - sometimes I hit a wall, because of dated information. Home Assistant evolves continually...a year from now, this might have a different solution. Components and their versions: Home Assistant Core 2021.1.0 (HA) Operating System 5.9 (HA) Node Red 7.2.11 (HA) Mosquitto Broker 5.1 (HA) Octoprint 1.5.2 MQTT 0.8.7 (Octoprint plugin) MQTT-Subscribe 0.1.6 (Octoprint plugin) MQTT Explorer 0.3.5 (Linux, optional)  My goal is to create buttons in a Lovelace dashboard, to trigger actions for my two 3D printers. Actions like "connect/disconnect" to start a connection between Octoprint and the printer, "preheat nozzle" so I can have the nozzle go to 180 degrees Celsius to change filament, "Extrude" to extrude 10mm of filament, or "Retract" to retract 10mm of filament, and maybe a "heat bed" so I can heat up the bed to remove a print. I'll start with a "Connect" button for my Lulzbot ...

  I'm going to start listing versions - sometimes I hit a wall, because of dated information. Home Assistant evolves continually...a year from now, this might have a different solution. Components and their versions: Home Assistant Core 2021.1.0 (HA) Operating System 5.9 (HA) Node Red 7.2.11 (HA) Mosquitto Broker 5.1 (HA - this is the MQTT Broker) Octoprint 1.5.2 MQTT 0.8.7 (Octoprint plugin) MQTT-Subscribe 0.1.6 (Octoprintg plugin) MQTT Explorer 0.3.5 (Linux, optional)  My goal is to create buttons in a Lovelace dashboard, to trigger actions for my two 3D printers. Actions like "connect/disconnect" to start a connection between Octoprint and the printer, "preheat nozzle" so I can have the nozzle go to 180 degrees Celsius to change filament, "Extrude" to extrude 10mm of filament, or "Retract" to retract 10mm of filament, and maybe a "heat bed" so I can heat up the bed to remove a print. I'm running Home Assistant on a...