olibos / acme.mqtt.alive

A simple Mqtt Alive service for device tracking

Acme.Mqtt.Alive

Why ?

To simplify device tracking in Home Automation and, of course, for fun!

How ?

This tool will be installed as a Windows Service and simply set a MQTT topic to online when connected to home network and to offline when the device is shut down but also when it's not available: network issues, sleep, hibernate, ...

Setup

Edit the appsettings.json and complete the MQTT section.

{
  "Mqtt": {
    "Host": "MQTT_HOST",
    "UserName": "MQTT_USERNAME",
    "Password": "MQTT_PASSWORD",
    "Topic": "MQTT_TOPIC",
    "ActionTopic": "OPTIONAL_MQTT_ACTION_TOPIC"
  }
}

And publish the project:

dotnet publish --configuration RELEASE --self-contained -r win-x64 -p:PublishTrimmed=true

Windows Installation

Run a shell with admin rights:

sc create "MQTT Alive" start=auto binpath="[path_to_exe_file😉]"
sc start "MQTT Alive"

Home Assistant integration

device_tracker:
  - platform: mqtt
    devices:
      my_pc: "monitor/mqtt/olivier"
    qos: 1
    payload_home: "online"
    payload_not_home: "offline"
    source_type: router

Bonus

If you set ActionTopic variable in appsettings.json You can remotely bring the targeted machine to sleep / hibernate.

Enjoy 🤖❗

Be creative with your automation...