EDL21 integration not showing any devices

[bluepuma77]

The problem

I want to use a Hichi IR USB sensor to read the data from a German power meter. I installed a fresh HA on Raspberry Pi 3B from image, updated to latest, enabled "advanced mode", added SSH add-on. I added a new EDL21 device according to doc with /dev/ttyUSB0.

The problem: it's not showing up anywhere:

When trying to add /dev/ttyUSB0 again, HA throws an error dialog, that it already exists. The sensor seems to be working fine, I can echo IR holding to paper and I see output when running cat /dev/ttyUSB0 multiple times.

What version of Home Assistant Core has the issue?

core-2024.4.4

What was the last working version of Home Assistant Core?

x

What type of installation are you running?

Home Assistant OS

Integration causing the issue

EDL21

Link to integration documentation on our website

https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/edl21/

Diagnostics information

No relevant diagnostics. I get errors when the IR USB is not connected to the power meter. When connected, there is no output.

Example YAML snippet

The sensor added by the integration is not showing up (automatically) in `configuration.yaml`.

Anything in the logs that might be useful for us?

No

Additional information

This has been really painful, I tried to get this to work for many hours. There are many post on the Internet about this issue, mostly suggesting to edit the configuration.yaml, which I understand is not the way to go in 2024.

I created a post in the community forum and a post on Discord without any response. It seems only 300 people are using the integration nowadays, out of 270.000, which indicates to me something is broken.

Most of the posts on the Internet don't have a real solution, they recommend to switch to IR-WiFi sensor and use MQTT instead. But when the power meter is next to the Raspberry, I rather just connect with a USB cable, saving power and Wifi usage.

There are many comments that this integration is broken for some time. If this integration is not relevant anymore, that's fine, too. Remove it or at least put a big notice in the docs, to let users know they are probably wasting their time.

[home-assistant]

edl21 documentation
edl21 source

[bluepuma77]

Here is a related issue with error messages

[bluepuma77]

Setup a new Raspi 3B, run latest HA 2024.5.2 in Docker. Still no joy, no device or entity is shown in GUI when I add /dev/ttyUSB0 as EDL21 integration. Using "cat /dev/ttyUSB0" on CLI repeatedly shows some output, on node and inside HA Docker container. How can I debug this more?

[bluepuma77]

Potentially related #91494

[bluepuma77]

Just came across another repo, that recommends to set the tty parameters:

$ stty -F /dev/ttyUSB0 9600
$ stty -F /dev/ttyUSB0 raw

That way I get continuous output from /dev/ttyUSB0:

$ cat /dev/ttyUSB0
�����z�6ズ��j

1-0:96.1.0*255(001LOG0086014402)
1-0:1.8.0*255(011441.4678*kWh)
1-0:0.2.0*255(ver.03,D8FF,20170505)
1-0:96.90.2*255(A8B4)
1-0:97.97.0*255(00040100)
!

When I restart Home Assistant Docker container, the values seem to be changed, cat /dev/ttyUSB0 only works for a short time before "losing the connection".

Found another discussion that recommends those setting:

stty -F /dev/ttyUSB0 9600 cs8 -cstopb -parenb raw

[SlKlElT]

I have the same problem with Hichi IR USB. HA (latest version) is running on a VM for Synology.

The log ist full with messages like this "WARNING (MainThread) [sml.asyncio] Timeout while waiting for meter data. Please check reading device. Restarting edl21"

Update: apparently the problem is not the device, but the connection to the electricity meter. I turned the reading head back and forth and pressed the blue button on the electricity meter, now I have 3 entities, no idea which of them helped. I just hoped I would see the current consumption, but it is only the total value for input and output