DSMR Smart Meter MQTT Client

Lightweight containerized Dutch Smart Meter (Slimme Meter) to MQTT daemon, with automatic Home Assistant integration.

Uses paho-mqtt and ndokter/dsmr_parser to do the heavy lifting.

Is this you?

You've been running Home Assistant on a Raspberry Pi in the meterkast for a while. You've hooked it up directly to your Smart Meter's P1 port with a USB cable, and you're happily using the built-in DSMR Slimme Meter integration.

But now you want to move Home Assistant to a server in the attic, without physical access to your Smart Meter. You want to keep using your Raspberry Pi to read the Smart Meter, and want to use the MQTT protocol to send the data upstairs. You want a turn-key, easy to configure, well-engineered application for the job.

In that case mqtt4dsmr is right for you!

Usage

Trying it out

The example uses podman since I'm more familiar with it than docker, but they should be relatively interchangeable.

When using rootless containers, make sure your user has the right group membership to access serial ports (this is why the --group-add option is there). On Fedora Linux this group is called dialout.

podman run -d                                             \
    --name mqtt4dsmr                                      \
    --group-add keep-groups                               \
    --tz=local                                            \
    --env MQTT_HOST=mqtt.home.example.org                 \
    --env MQTT_PORT=1883                                  \
    --env MQTT_USERNAME=my_user                           \
    --env MQTT_PASSWORD=my_password                       \
    --device /dev/serial/by-id/usb-MY_DEVICE:/dev/ttyDSMR \
    ghcr.io/antonijn/mqtt4dsmr

Automated execution (docker-compose)

If you have little experience with containers and/or are running on Raspberry Pi OS, this is the recommended method.

Example compose.yaml:

version: "3"

services:
  mqtt4dsmr:
    image: "ghcr.io/antonijn/mqtt4dsmr:latest"
    environment:
      MQTT_HOST: "mqtt.home.example.org"
      MQTT_PORT: "1883"
      MQTT_USERNAME: "my_user"
      MQTT_PASSWORD: "my_password"
    devices:
      - "/dev/serial/by-id/usb-MY_DEVICE:/dev/ttyDSMR"
    restart: always

Use additional environment variables as required, per the documentation below.

Run docker compose up -d to start the application. There are multiple ways to enable docker compose at system start-up. One method is to place the above configuration in /etc/docker/compose/mqtt4dsmr/docker-compose.yml, and follow this guide. Running systemctl enable --now docker-compose@mqtt4dsmr should then do the trick.

Automated execution (Quadlet)

Put the following in ~/.config/containers/systemd/mqtt4dsmr.container:

[Unit]
Description=De Slimme Meter MQTT Client
After=network-online.target

[Container]
ContainerName=mqtt4dsmr
Image=ghcr.io/antonijn/mqtt4dsmr:latest
Annotation=run.oci.keep_original_groups=1
Environment=MQTT_HOST=mqtt.home.example.org
Environment=MQTT_PORT=1883
Environment=MQTT_USERNAME=my_user
Environment=MQTT_PASSWORD=my_password
AddDevice=/dev/serial/by-id/usb-MY_DEVICE:/dev/ttyDSMR
Timezone=local

[Service]
Restart=always

[Install]
WantedBy=default.target

Use additional environment variables as required, per the documentation below.

Enable the container using systemctl --user start mqtt4dsmr. To automatically start the daemon at system start-up while using rootless containers, enable lingering for your user: loginctl enable-linger <my-user>.

Options

Options must be given to the container as environment variables.

Option	Description	Default
MQTT_HOST	IP address or URL for MQTT broker.
MQTT_PORT	Broker MQTT port. If set to 8883 and MQTT_TLS is not explicitly defined, then MQTT_TLS defaults to true. (Optional)	1883
MQTT_USERNAME	MQTT username. (Optional)
MQTT_PASSWORD	MQTT password. (Optional if MQTT_USERNAME is not set)
MQTT_TLS	Use MQTT over TLS. If set to true and MQTT_PORT is not explicitly defined, then MQTT_PORT defaults to 8883. (Optional)	false
MQTT_TLS_INSECURE	Disable hostname verification for MQTT over TLS. (Optional)	false
MQTT_CA_CERTS	CA bundle file for broker verification. Only relevant for MQTT over TLS. (Optional)	system CA bundle
MQTT_CERTFILE	Client certificate for authentication. (Optional)
MQTT_KEYFILE	Client keyfile for authentication. (Optional)
MQTT_TOPIC_PREFIX	Topic prefix for application MQTT traffic. You should probably not change the default values unless you know it will conflict. (Optional)	dsmr
HA_DEVICE_ID	Home Assistant internal device ID. You should probably not change the default values unless you know it will conflict. (Optional)	dsmr
HA_DISCOVERY_PREFIX	Home Assistant discovery prefix. This should match the value you have configured in your Home Assistant MQTT integration. If you have not configured such a value, then don't change this option. (Optional)	homeassistant
DSMR_VERSION	Dutch Smart Meter Specification version. Can be one of AUSTRIA_ENERGIENETZE_STEIERMARK, BELGIUM_FLUVIUS, EON_HUNGARY, ISKRA_IE, LUXEMBOURG_SMARTY, Q3D, SAGEMCOM_T210_D_R, SWEDEN, V2_2, V3, V4, V5. See ndokter/dsmr_parser for more information. (Optional)	V4
SERIAL_SETTINGS	Serial settings. Is probably related to your DSMR_VERSION setting. Worth playing around with if things don't work initially. Can be one of V2_2, V4, V5. See ndokter/dsmr_parser for more information. (Optional)	V4
SERIAL_DEVICE	Path to serial device file. NOTE: This option is for testing purposes only. When running in a container, SERIAL_DEVICE always has the value /dev/ttyDSMR and cannot be overridden. Make sure to map the host device accordingly.
MESSAGE_INTERVAL	Minimum average interval between messages in seconds. Set to positive value to enable rate limiting. (Optional)	0
LOG_LEVEL	Logging level. Must be DEBUG, INFO, WARNING, ERROR or CRITICAL. (Optional)	INFO

Hardware support

Automated builds are available for AMD64, ARM64 and ARMv7. This means mqtt4dsmr should run on any x86-based personal computer, all second generation (or newer) Raspberry Pis and all second generation (or newer) Raspberry Pi Zeros.

First generation Raspberry Pis are not supported at the moment, since ARMv6 builds are currently not possible. This is because recent versions of the cryptography package (required by dlms-cosem, in turn required by dsmr-parser) are broken on ARMv6.