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How to control the lights of your Xiaomi Gateway 3 with OpenLumi.

Posted on by Luis Perez

This is a guide on how to set up a Xiaomi Gateway 3 flashed with OpenLumi for you to control its LED lights through Home Assistant.

First things first, props to the people who allowed me to do it, I’ve originally followed these two guides written in Russian to do it myself:

If you get stuck, you may want to check them out for reference.

Before moving forward, you need to have configured MQTT on your Home Assistant, if you haven’t done that, please follow one of these guides to set it up first:

Also, I’m assuming that you already have some experience with Home Assistance and know how to work on the Linux terminal, I’m also assuming you’ve already flashed your Xiaomi Gateway with OpenLumi. If you haven’t, please look at my previous posts.

Now, you need to have installed some packages first, so open the terminal of your Gateway and install these packages:

opkg update && opkg install node git-http mpg123 mpc mpd-full

Now you need to install Lumi:

mkdir /opt
cd /opt
git clone https://github.com/Beetle-II/lumi.git
cd lumi
cp config_example.json config.json

Now we’ll use “vi” to edit the config.json file:

{
  "sensor_debounce_period": 300,
  "sensor_treshhold": 50,
  "button_click_duration": 300,
          
  "homeassistant": true,
  "tts_cache": true,
  "sound_channel": "Master",
  "sound_volume": 50,
  "mqtt_url": "mqtt://[HA IP ADDRESS HERE]",
  "mqtt_topic": "lumi", #Use the name of your gateway
  "use_mac_in_mqtt_topic": true, 
  "mqtt_options": {
    "port": 1883,
    "username": "login here",
    "password": "password here",
    "keepalive": 60,
    "reconnectPeriod": 1000,
    "clean": true,
    "encoding": "utf8",
    "will": {
      "topic": "lumi/state",
      "payload": "offline",
      "qos": 1,
      "retain": true
    }
  }
}

I highly advise you to use the “true” value on the “use_mac_in_mqtt_topic”, if by any chance you have more than one gateway, this will help you differentiate all of them on your Home Assistant.

Also, make sure to change all “lumi” values with the desired name of your Gateway, it will help you differentiate the devices on your home assistance in case you have more than one.

After configuring the config.json file, we will need to start our service, so we launch on the terminal:

node /opt/lumi/lumi.js

That might result in an error, so after getting feedback from your gateway, use control+c or control+z to exit.

After that, we type on the terminal:

cd /opt/lumi
chmod +x lumi
cp lumi /etc/init.d/lumi
/etc/init.d/lumi enable
/etc/init.d/lumi start

Then type again:

node /opt/lumi/lumi.js

If you see something like this:

It means you have set it up correctly and it’s now done, you should be able to see your device on your Home Assistant Integrations section, here is how mine looks:

In my case, I have two gateways configured, if you have only one you should see half as much.

That’s it! Happy setups!

Using Node-Red to push media and TTS messages to your Xiaomi Gateway 3

Posted on by Luis Perez

Before starting, this guide assumes you’ve been able to do the following things on your Gateway:

  • You’ve been able to flash your Xiaomi Gateway 3 with OpenLumi
  • You’ve been able to connect to your Gateway via SSH and it has a static IP
  • You’ve been able to set up an MPD Server on your OpenLumi and know it’s working because you’ve tested it with Auremo.
  • You’ve been able to upload the mp3 files you need and set up your MPD device on Home Assistant using Yaml.
  • You have Node-Red configured and have some degree of experience with it.

If you have not been able to do these things, please check out my previous post.

What was particularly hard to set up while working with the MPD Daemon on my Lumi Gateway was being able to figure out how to send Text To Speech (TTS) commands and play audio files from Node-Red.

Before moving forward, make sure you can play the files you have uploaded to your gateway using Auremo and you can send TTS commands directly from Home Assistant.

If you can do these things and you are also able to work with Node-Red within your home assistant, then please, continue.

If you need help setting up Node-Red Home Assistant, I highly recommend the Node-Red videos from The Hookup Youtube Channel.

Now, to set up our gateway on Node-Red we’ll need to use the following nodes: Trigger, Inject and call service.

We will use inject to test commands and trigger our Node-Red flows.

The first thing we need to do is to learn to manage the volume of what we want to hear in your Gateway. To do this I use the following, double click on your call service node and fill it up will the following information:

Name: Volume (Or whatever you feel comfortable with)
Server: Home Assistant
Domain: media_player
Service: volume_set
Entity: Xiaomi Gateway or use the name you chose for your gateway
On Data, make sure you chose JSON and type the volume you desire, this one goes from 0.0 to 1, on this case I've chosen 0.6, {"volume_level":"0.6"}

After you can click now on the red button labeled “Done” in the upper right corner of the node window.

You should have something like this:

After this step we would like our gateway to be able to say or play something, I will choose now to play a sound, so, again will I use the call service node for this.

Then we connect the nodes:

Then I added a new call service node and I’ve called it “Ding”, so here is the configuration as follows:

Name: Ding (Or whatever you feel comfortable with)
Server: Home Assistant
Domain: media_player
Service: play_media (Dont confuse this with media_play)
Entity: Xiaomi Gateway or use the name you chose for your gateway
On Data, make sure you chose JSON and type the name of an uploaded mp3 on your /mpd/music folder, on my case I'm choosing {"media_content_type":"music","media_content_id":"Doorbell.mp3"}

After this step, we press the red button “Done” and then “Deploy”, you’ll find the deploy button on the top right corner of Node-Red.

You should be able to play the sound “Doorbell.mp3” or whatever file you’ve chosen using the inject node.

Now to make it say something, you need to have something like this, again we’ll use the call service node, but first, notice I’ve also placed a trigger node between the played audio node “Ding” and the TTS node “Someone at the door”. This is because if you don’t use the trigger, Node-Red will not wait until the sounds finish playing before playing the TTS message. You’ll only hear the “Someone at the door” node without the “Ding” node.

Now, to make it say something, make sure you have something like this on your “Someone at the door” call service node:

Notice we are using J: expression instead of {} JSON this time. The node configuration is as follows:

Name: Someone at the door (Or whatever you feel comfortable with)
Server: Home Assistant
Domain: tts
Service: cloud_say or google_say (Try the one you like the most)
Entity: Xiaomi Gateway or use the name you've chosen for your gateway
On Data, make sure you select J:Expression  and type {"message":"There is someone at the door"}.

I believe it also works if you chose JSON.

After you’ve configured the node, hit the red done button and the deploy button and your flow should be ready, you should be able to push TTS and sound messages from Node-Red to your Xiaomi Gateway now.

Configuring Media Player Daemon on the Xiaomi Gateway 3

Posted on by Luis Perez
DGNWG05LM / ZHWG11LM

Before beginning, It’s worth noting I’ve already flashed OpenWRT on my Xiaomi Gateway 3 (DGNWG05LM / ZHWG11LM)

I’m assuming you’ve flashed already OpenLumi on your gateway, if you haven’t, please follow the guides below to do it:

This is how you root it:
https://openlumi.github.io/gain_root.html
And this is how you flash OpenWRT on it:
https://openlumi.github.io/

Once your device is rooted, flashed with OpenWRT and you have ssh access to it, you’ll find your Xiaomi Gateway has become pretty useless unless you have an actual plan for it. (As it was my case)

In my case, I wanted to be able to push media files and TTS messages to the gateway using Home Assistant and Node-Red. I’ll try to explain the Node-Red part in a separate post, but for the time being, I’ll focus on the MPD Server setup.

A great part of what I’m doing is based on a guide I’ve found in Russian, but I’ve found it hard to understand so I thought it would be a good idea to write this one in another language.

After you’ve managed to gain root access, you need to begin by installing some packages on your gateway, to do this we will run on the terminal :

opkg update && opkg install node git-http mpg123 mpc mpd-full

Once you do, we need to create the files and directories for MPD to work, so go ahead and type in your gateway’s terminal: 

cd /
mkdir mpd
cd mpd 
mkdir music
mkdir playlists
touch database
touch log
touch /etc/mpd.state

Once you’ve done this, we will create the configuration file for MPD, to do this we will make the mpd.conf file on the /etc/

I’ve used “vi” for this, if you don’t know how to use vi to edit files, please check this out: https://www.redhat.com/sysadmin/introduction-vi-editor

This is how I did it:

I first created a backup of the original file and deleted the original one:

cp /etc/mpd.conf /etc/mpd.conf.bkp
rm /etc/mpd.conf

Then, I created my new mpd.conf file with the command:

vi /etc/mpd.conf

Once you’re ready to edit, you can go ahead and paste the following config info:


state_file "/mpd/state" # Read the note at the bottom "How do I set the MPD to keep the volume level?"
music_directory "/mpd/music" # Specify the path to the music folder, in my case the mpd folder is in the root
playlist_directory "/mpd/playlists" # Specify the path to the playlists folder, in my case the mpd folder is in the root
db_file "/mpd/database" # Specify the path to the database database, in my case the mpd folder is at the root
#log_file "/mpd/log" # Uncomment the line if you want to write to the log
#log_level "default" # Uncomment the line if you want to write to the log
bind_to_address "any"
port "6600"
user "root"
group "root"
auto_update "yes"
auto_update_depth "3"
filesystem_charset "UTF-8"
id3v1_encoding "UTF-8"
audio_output {
  type "alsa"
  name "My ALSA Device"
  device "hw:0,0"
  mixer_type "software"
  mixer_control "Master"
  mixer_device "default"
}

After saving it (Remember, to save on vi you need to type ESC and type :wq!, you can check the configuration by typing:

cat /etc/mpd.conf

And you should have something similar to this:

Then to apply the changes run:

/etc/init.d/mpd stop
/etc/init.d/mpd start

After this step, I’ve uploaded an mp3 file to the /mpd/music/ folder to test the functionality, for obvious reasons I can’t share that file, but we’ll call it doorbell.mp3, there are plenty of sites that offer these kinds of files for free.

Now to test if the MPD server is working you can download Auremo from this website:

https://code.google.com/archive/p/auremo/downloads

After installing Auremo, make sure you set it up using the IP of your MPD server (Your Gateway’s IP) to test its functionality, if you can see your mp3 file and you’re able to play it from your computer, you should be able to make it work on Home Assistant as well.

After that, you should be ready to use your MPD daemon on your home assistant as long as you configure the gateway on your configuration.yaml file, my configuration is similar to this:

media_player:
  - platform: mpd
    name: Xiaomi Lumi Gateway (Use whatever name makes you happy)
    host: 192.168.0.100 (Make sure you use the IP assigned to your gateway and you have a static ip)
    port: 6600
    scan_interval: 30

After this, restart Home Assistant.

You should now be able to push TTS commands on your Home Assistant by going to:

Settings >> Home Assistant Cloud >> Text to Speech and clicking on “Try”

From there, select your newly added Xiaomi Lumi Gateway device and try to make it say a few things. 🙂

Right now, just like this, it’s ready for me to push commands, in my case I’ll use it with Node-Red to push alerts and voice commands.

I’ll be showing how I did this in a later post.