Xiaomi Mi Flora Plant Sensor MQTT Client/Daemon

Tutorials & Examples
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181

I had the same problem as you, the openHAB items were not populated with the MQTT values. Eventually I switched to the homie standard and everything is working. As a side note, it did take a while before openHAB populated the first items.

NB. I’m using the fork with the temperature/humidty sensor support: https://github.com/MartinHaimberger/miflora-mqtt-daemon but that shouldn’t matter.

My config if you are interested:

config.ini

[General]

reporting_method = mqtt-homie
adapter = hci0

[Daemon]

[MQTT]
hostname = 10.0.0.153
port = 1883
keepalive = 60
username = miflora3
password = xxx
base_topic = homie
homie_device_id = mi_sensors

[MiFlora]

Olijfboom@Tuin          = C4:7C:8D:xxx
Lepelplant@Badkamer     = C4:7C:8D:xxx

[MiTempBt]

Woonkamer@Woonkamer     = 4C:65:A8:xxx
Slaapkamer@Slaapkamer   = 4C:65:A8:xxx
Badkamer@Badkamer       = 4C:65:A8:xxx

Things

Thing mqtt:topic:lepelplant "Lepelplant" (mqtt:broker:MosquittoMqttBroker) @ "Badkamer" {
        Channels:
            Type number : light         "Light Intensity"   [ stateTopic="homie/mi_sensors/Lepelplant/light" ]
            Type number : battery       "Battery Charge"    [ stateTopic="homie/mi_sensors/Lepelplant/battery" ]
            Type number : temperature   "Temperature"       [ stateTopic="homie/mi_sensors/Lepelplant/temperature" ]
            Type number : conductivity  "Soil Fertility"    [ stateTopic="homie/mi_sensors/Lepelplant/conductivity" ]
            Type number : moisture      "Soil Moisture"     [ stateTopic="homie/mi_sensors/Lepelplant/moisture" ]
    }

Items

Number:Illuminance		PlantLepelplant_Sunlight	"Light Intensity Lepelplant [%d lx]"	<light>			(gVirtueel, gPlantSunlight)			{ channel="mqtt:topic:lepelplant:light" }
Number:Dimensionless	PlantLepelplant_Battery		"Battery Lepelplant [%d %%]"			<battery>		(gBadkamer, gBatteries)				{ channel="mqtt:topic:lepelplant:battery" }
Number:Temperature		PlantLepelplant_Temperature	"Temperature Lepelplant [%.1f °C]"		<temperature>	(gVirtueel, gPlantTemperatures)		{ channel="mqtt:topic:lepelplant:temperature" }
Number					PlantLepelplant_Fertility	"Soil Fertility Lepelplant [%d µS/cm]"	<lawnmower>		(gVirtueel, gFertilities)			{ channel="mqtt:topic:lepelplant:conductivity" }
Number:Dimensionless	PlantLepelplant_Moisture	"Soil Moisture Lepelplant [%d %%]"		<humidity>		(gVirtueel, gMoistures)				{ channel="mqtt:topic:lepelplant:moisture" }
1 Like
182

I came around and tried getting rid of moquette and switching over to mosquitto, the connection from the daemon to the broker works now… but, there are a ton of other problems awaiting.

So i am currently running on the latest OH Version (i believe 2.51),
i tried utilizing the standard MQTT config in the MMiflora Daemon with the JSONPath transformation as described a lot in this topic.
Doesn’t work, i just don’t get any values out of my items, the most they show is a “NaN” or a Null,
now i tried the textual configuration as is described here, didn’t work.
As i don’t use .Item or .things file configuration anyhow i tried it through PaperUI, same result.
I tried every combination of the Json Path Conversion, tried the System Broker Thing, the Standard MQTT Broker thing, every other combination i could think of, doesn’t work.

I then gave the Homie Standard setting a shot, can’t get it to work either, no matter what i try i get an error: OFFLINE - COMMUNICATION_ERROR java.lang.Exception: Did not receive mandatory topic value:
Apparently Version 3.00 which the binding speaks isn’t compatible with the Daemon.

Last Tryout i did was the HomeAssistant standard in the Daemon, and low an behold all the sudden my inbox automatically gets populated with all the Sensors. Theres only one caviat: The different channels contain the entire payload, and for some reason i can’t apply a Json Path transformation there in PaperUI… EDIT: Correction, i found the JSON in the Channel Link to the Item, now i can display the individual channels with minor correction in PaperUI

For all the people running this solution on here, are you all running on older OH versions so that you dont seem to have any issues? The hassle to get this running is so frustrating.

Btw, apparently my raspi also has an issue keeping the bluetooth connection stable, over night the adapter just crashed, wasn’t able to restart the service and had to restart the entire Pi to get it running,
found some other folks on the web with the same issue, went to the latest firmware, let’s see if that fixed it… EDIT: didn’t fix it, seems after 6-7 hours it just crashes… so not really impressed with the entire solution. too bad i bought 5 of these sensors

Given that my Aqara Sensor runs just fine, i am looking forward to a sensor with display and zigbee, seems there are a couple pushing in the market soon, blitzwolf seeming to be the first ones. Lets hope they’ll be as easy as the aqara ones in setup

183

I am wondering how you would solve the following challenge: My RasberryPi sits in the basement in a 19’’ rack, but my plant is 2 floors above, no way the bluetooth signal is strong enough, what would you recommend? Setting up a new Pi device just as a Gateway?

184

Welcome to the community!

I have done that with three raspberries all over my home. Currently i have 11 sensors on two floors. covered with three raspis. The version one or a zero are doing the job. They are conneted using wifi.

1 Like
185

If you have your stuff in a 19 inch rack, you likely have sufficient Cat.5/6 cabling as well in your house.
If so, you might consider a dumb USB-via-RJ45 extender pair like this:

https://de.aliexpress.com/item/32554187701.html

I’ve tried them successfully with aprx. 20 meter Cat.6 in between with Zigbee and Bluetooth dongles.

186

Nice and simple idea! I did not thought about it :slight_smile: will try that! Thanks.

187

Hi guys,

I’m working on a cloud Plants Database with API which I hope that can be useful for this integration.
At this stage, this database consists of temperature, light, soil moisture and fertility thresholds I found in open internet sources. It can be used with Xiaomi MiFlora plant sensor or any other sensor. It is also useful for different irrigation projects.

This is FREE service and it will always be free! Anyone can use information from the database for any purpose without permission.

It is intended to be community sourced and I see it as a GitHub for plant care recipes.

The purpose is to help the community with collecting and storing STRUCTURED information about plants care and potentially plants in general.

The service is in active development and it has already gone live so you can login https://open.plantbook.io , get API credentials and start using that. BTW, there is a social Single SignOn so you don’t even have to register.

The documentation is within Web UI and in GitHub (see below)

Currently, DB is read only so you can search plants and get their specific environmental/soil thresholds.

I will be adding sample clients to the below Github repo to give you an idea how to use the API.

https://github.com/slaxor505/OpenPlantbook-client

I’m honestly home-assistant user and as next step I will be building integration for home-assistant. Although, I’d love to build integration with OpenHab as well but it may take time for me as I’m not familiar with OpenHab so I’d be great if someone could help with this.

Roadmap:

  • Allow to add and update plants thresholds via WebUI
  • Ability to lodge request for specific plants information to be added to DB
  • Plant detection API from images
  • And many other ideas which are blowing my mind… :slight_smile:

Please take a look. Let me know what is working well and what is not working at all. Any thoughts and feedback will be much appreciated. I’m open to new feature requests and your ideas!

Slava

3 Likes
188

All,

with this binding I was able to connect to Miflora succussfully.
Thank you,
@ThomDietrich

I just have one issue (on OH3.0.1 on a Raspberry Pi4 8GB)
Sometimes I don’t get data and obviously the bluetooth service is the culprit:

sudo hcitool lescan
Set scan parameters failed: Input/output error

After a restart a scan works just fine, so does the python script.

Is this a known issue with BT on a Raspberry?
189

Hi All - wondering what sort of battery life others are seeing using the Mi Flora sensor with this Daemon.

I’ve had it set for 5 minute intervals - and started with a new battery, which was reporting 100%. It’s been 12 days, and the sensor is now reporting 11%.

Anyone else seeing such a short battery life with a similar polling interval?
Any other thoughts from the community?

Thanks

190

Never saw this fast reduction. My sensors last at least2-3 month (not measured).

But a scan interval of a hour or less should be enough.

191

Thanks - I’ve adjusted to an hour interval now. Will monitor and compare vs before.

192

After one of the firmware updates of the sensor I also noticed that the battery level got very inaccurate. It will drop to < 20% very quickly but the batteries will last for much longer after that.

Still, 5 minutes is probably very low as others have mentioned. Mine has problems reaching all sensors reliably because of the distance so I keep mine on 15 minutes in case it misses a few updates.

193

I also have this weird battery drops. Sometimes they are wildly different between readings and then it starts dropping over time, just to be stable for a longer time afterwards.

194

There’s now a fork of ESPresense (bluetooth based presense detection via ESP32s) that supports active polling of Mifloras and sending their data via MQTT in configurable intervals via the espresense ESP32, so one can use the same ESP32s for multiroom presense detection and connecting to the Mifloras across the house, circumventing range issues without additional hardware. You can configure which Mifloras to poll in the ESPresence UI so if a Miflora is in range of multiple ESP32s, it does not get polled from multiple sources.

For basic OpenHab/ESPresense integration, see, e.g. here Step-by-step presence detection with bluetooth tag (e.g., GTags) and ESPresense on ESP32 - #9 by simon20

ESPresense official: GitHub - ESPresense/ESPresense: An ESP32 based presence detection node for use with the Home Assistant mqtt_room component for localized device presence detection.

ESPresense fork with Miflora support: GitHub - 0Flush0/ESPresenseFlora: An Espresense fork that supports the MiFlora plant sensor

Not sure to what extent the fork will be maintained; and auto-updates will remove it, I guess. So, if you’d like to see this integrated in the ESPresense official releases, maybe add a comment to the relevant issue here: Feature implementation: Xiaomi Mi Flora plant sensor · Issue #720 · ESPresense/ESPresense · GitHub

2 Likes
195

@ThomDietrich is there any way to debug the binding? I installed a BT USB dongle on my raspberry because the built in BT chip is weakened by my aluminium case, and while the dongle is discovered correctly when checking usb-devices

T:  Bus=03 Lev=01 Prnt=01 Port=01 Cnt=01 Dev#=  2 Spd=12  MxCh= 0
D:  Ver= 2.00 Cls=e0(wlcon) Sub=01 Prot=01 MxPS=64 #Cfgs=  1
P:  Vendor=0a12 ProdID=0001 Rev=31.64
C:  #Ifs= 2 Cfg#= 1 Atr=c0 MxPwr=0mA
I:  If#= 0 Alt= 0 #EPs= 3 Cls=e0(wlcon) Sub=01 Prot=01 Driver=btusb
E:  Ad=02(O) Atr=02(Bulk) MxPS=  64 Ivl=0ms
E:  Ad=81(I) Atr=03(Int.) MxPS=  16 Ivl=1ms
E:  Ad=82(I) Atr=02(Bulk) MxPS=  64 Ivl=0ms
I:  If#= 1 Alt= 0 #EPs= 2 Cls=e0(wlcon) Sub=01 Prot=01 Driver=btusb
E:  Ad=03(O) Atr=01(Isoc) MxPS=   0 Ivl=1ms
E:  Ad=83(I) Atr=01(Isoc) MxPS=   0 Ivl=1ms

I get exceptions when running the script:

Adding sensor to device list and testing connection ...
Name:          "flowerCare1"
[2024-06-05 10:32:11] Initial connection to Mi Flora sensor "flowerCare1" (xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx) failed due to exception:

Adding sensor to device list and testing connection ...
Name:          "flowerCare2"
[2024-06-05 10:32:12] Initial connection to Mi Flora sensor "flowerCare2" (xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx) failed due to exception:

[2024-06-05 10:32:12] Announcing Mi Flora devices to MQTT broker for auto-discovery ...

[2024-06-05 10:32:12] Retrieving data from sensor "flowerCare1" ...
[2024-06-05 10:32:13] Retrying ...
[2024-06-05 10:32:13] Failed to retrieve data from Mi Flora sensor "flowerCare1" (C4:7C:8D:6A:CE:38), success rate: 0%

[2024-06-05 10:32:13] Retrieving data from sensor "flowerCare2" ...
[2024-06-05 10:32:13] Retrying ...
[2024-06-05 10:32:14] Failed to retrieve data from Mi Flora sensor "flowerCare2" (C4:7C:8D:6A:41:36), success rate: 0%

[2024-06-05 10:32:14] Sleeping (300 seconds) ...

It does work when using the built-in BT chip, but only when the plants are close to the Raspi.