Home Assistant Integration via MQTT

Overview 
 Integrating Meshtastic into Home Assistant unlocks powerful home automation possibilities: track family members on a mesh map, get alerts when a node goes offline, and trigger smart-home actions based on mesh events. The integration uses MQTT as the transport layer, with Mosquitto as the local broker. 

 Step 1: Install and Configure Mosquitto 
 In Home Assistant, navigate to Settings → Add-ons → Add-on Store and install the Mosquitto broker add-on. After installation, open its configuration tab and add a user: 
 logins: - username: meshuser
 password: yourpassword 
 Start the add-on and enable Start on boot . Note your Home Assistant host IP - your Meshtastic node will connect to this address. 

 Step 2: Configure Your Meshtastic Node for MQTT 
 Open the Meshtastic app , go to Radio Configuration → MQTT and set: 
 
 MQTT Server Address: your HA host IP (e.g. 192.168.1.100 ) 
 Username / Password: the credentials you set above 
 Root Topic: msh/US (or your region) 
 Uplink / Downlink Enabled: on 
 
 Also ensure your node has WiFi configured under Radio Configuration → Network . 

 Step 3: MQTT Sensor YAML in Home Assistant 
 Add the following to your configuration.yaml (adjust node IDs as needed): 
 mqtt:
 sensor: - name: "Node !a1b2c3d4 Battery"
 state_topic: "msh/US/2/json/telemetry/!a1b2c3d4"
 value_template: "{{ value_json.payload.device_metrics.battery_level }}"
 unit_of_measurement: "%"
 device_class: battery - name: "Node !a1b2c3d4 Latitude"
 state_topic: "msh/US/2/json/position/!a1b2c3d4"
 value_template: "{{ value_json.payload.latitude_i | float / 1e7 }}" - name: "Node !a1b2c3d4 Longitude"
 state_topic: "msh/US/2/json/position/!a1b2c3d4"
 value_template: "{{ value_json.payload.longitude_i | float / 1e7 }}" 
 Reload your YAML configuration after saving. 

 Step 4: Automations 
 Alert when a node hasn't been heard in 30 minutes: 
 automation: - alias: "Mesh node offline alert"
 trigger:
 platform: state
 entity_id: sensor.node_a1b2c3d4_battery
 to: unavailable
 for: "00:30:00"
 action:
 service: notify.mobile_app_your_phone
 data:
 message: "Node !a1b2c3d4 has not reported in 30 minutes" 

 Notify on critical battery: 
 - alias: "Mesh node low battery"
 trigger:
 platform: numeric_state
 entity_id: sensor.node_a1b2c3d4_battery
 below: 15
 action:
 service: notify.mobile_app_your_phone
 data:
 message: "Node !a1b2c3d4 battery critical: {{ states('sensor.node_a1b2c3d4_battery') }}%" 

 Trigger lights when a family member arrives home via mesh position: 
 - alias: "Welcome home via mesh"
 trigger:
 platform: zone
 entity_id: device_tracker.mesh_family_member
 zone: zone.home
 event: enter
 action:
 service: light.turn_on
 target:
 entity_id: light.porch 
 To use zone-based presence, create a device_tracker that updates from the latitude/longitude sensors using a template or the MQTT device tracker integration. 

 Step 5: Lovelace Dashboard 
 For a mesh map view, install the Map card in Lovelace. Add a card of type map and reference your device tracker entities. You can also use the auto-entities HACS card to dynamically list all mesh node sensors. For richer visualization, some community members use Grafana with the InfluxDB integration to feed in MQTT telemetry.