Thanks, everyone, for the input. I am happy to report that this is resolved. I must have taken an extra dose of stupid pills at some point in the last couple of years, because the resolution was to pay attention to the font case of the topic specification in my devlist. At some point in the past, all of my devices had their "status_topic" changed to use lowercase "power," for example: "status_topic": "stat/sonoffbr2c/power." The correct usage is "status_topic": "stat/sonoffbr2c/POWER."
So the Sonoff devices, although they would respond to a cmnd, they would not properly publish their stat topic; hence eisy was not updating with their current status.
I discovered this thanks to some testing using mosquitto_sub (which is built in to the eisy Mosquitto implementation).
To close out this thread, here is a summary for new eisy users:
1. Eisy contains an extra instance of Mosquitto available for use by the MQTT node server. You do NOT need to set up a separate instance as is specified in the original installation instructions for the node server. See above for reference to the gen.mosquitto.ud. This uses port 1884 and does not require authentication (no user or password required). While you could try to change the authentication config, I did not do so.
2. No change to the configuration of the gen instance is needed to run the node server, but use the IP of your eisy and port 1884 in the config for the nodeserver.
3. Since the node server does "require" a user name and password, go ahead and add the mqtt_user and mqtt_password Custom Parameters in the nodeserver config. You can fill in anything in these fields, or leave them blank, but the keys are needed for it to start correctly.
4. Note that I had a problem where the Configuration Help was not displaying on the node server configuration page -- UNTIL I added a Custom Parameter, then it showed up. This makes it exceeding difficult for a first-time user. I have attached a screenshot of the help text for new users.
4. On the sonoff device MQTT config page, which you access using the device's IP address, same thing, leave the user name and password blank, or fill them in with anything. Use the IP of the eisy as the host and port 1884 on the MQTT Configuration page.
5. Make sure the "Topic" you enter on the sonoff device MQTT config page matches the topic specified in your devlist.
6. Make sure the "Client" name on the MQTT Config page of the device is different than the Topic name.
7. **Most importantly**, pay attention to case in your devlist when setting topic names The below works for me (you would insert your own topic in the middle):
- "status_topic": "stat/sonoffas6_a/POWER"
- "cmd_topic": "cmnd/sonoffas6_a/POWER"
8. If you want to view the MQTT activity in the MQTT Nodeserver log, set the logging level to "debug," not "info."
