Good day!
I’ve been an Insteon user for years and upgraded to the eISY about a year ago. I’m now trying to expand into adding custom devices using Arduinos around my home with MQTT for integration, but I’m completely stuck after working on this for five days. I’m very new to MQTT and eISY Node Servers, so I’m here to beg for help. I apologize for the length of this post and any silly mistakes I might be making—I’m still learning and really want to get this working so I can explore more complex projects.
I’m struggling with the MQTT Node Server (slot 1) on my eISY (firmware 5.8.4, Polyglot v3.2.27). Despite confirming my broker works, the Node Server remains stuck on "Waiting on valid configuration" (notices: "Start-up" and "Waiting on valid configuration"). My goal is to control a simple Arduino Nano with an LED via MQTT topics (ard_nano_001/led and ard_nano_001/status) as a learning project, so I can eventually add MQTT devices to my Admin Console for scenes and automation.
I have Home Assistant running a Broker without SSL. I've verified that it's working and I've even been able to publish messages to make the little LED turn on and off from MQTT Explorer. I ran mosquitto_sub SSH command from the eISY and got a test message, so I know the eISY can talk to the Broker. Ditto from CMD on my PC.
I've tried changing the custom parameters from the default "mqtt_server" and so on to things like host, post, user, pass, and even added "secure" set to 0 or false. I'm very, very sure I have the broker IP address and credentials in correctly, though maybe I have the wrong parameters? I went with Home Assistant for the broker, because I've seen some posts saying that you can't use the broker on the eISY for outside access.
I think I have to have a devices.yami placed and setup my test device as a bulb. I made sure to set the devfile to the correct path. It's:
/var/polyglot/pg3/ns/0021b9026bb5_1/devices.yaml (also where I set devfile)
with
bulbs:
- node_address: ard_nano_001_led
name: Arduino LED
type: switch
topics:
set: ard_nano_001/led
status: ard_nano_001/status
commands:
DON: ON
DOF: OFF
status:
ON: LED ON
OFF: LED OFF
I tried deleting and reinstalling the MQTT Node Server, though I've noticed the UUID remains the same each time. I did a full cleanup via SSH command and verified my directories were removed before re-adding them.
I'm just getting this "loop" in the log:
2025-05-07 00:38:52.588 Thread-7 (start) udi_interface INFO Controller:start: Start: Waiting on valid configuration 2025-05-07 00:38:52.588 Thread-7 (start) udi_interface.custom INFO custom:_save: Sending data notices to Polyglot.
Earlier logs showed AttributeError: 'Controller' object has no attribute 'mqttc' on stop, which I don't know how to interpret. No connection attempt to 192.168.1.52:1883 in logs, only to localhost:8883.
I’d appreciate any guidance—I’ve been at this for days and really want to get this working for my little test so I can hopefully figure out the rest of this system. My goal is to add MQTT devices to my Admin Console so I can add them to Insteon scenes and the like and really have fun. I've noticed that going into the UD Admin Console does have a place under MQTT now to add nodes such as switches, but the window just disappears after I add something and I can't find where anything was actually created.
I have done my best to read the documentation on this, but I'm clearly missing something. Thank you to anyone who will give me a hand with this!
