Introduction

Prior to implementing the business logic of your application, you’ll need to incorporate several essential pieces of code into your project. Essentially, everything boils down to a few fundamental rules:

1. HADevice and HAMqtt instances need to be initialized once globally or as a part of another global object.

2. HAMqtt::begin needs to be called at the end of Arduino’s setup logic. It lets you provide the MQTT broker’s IP address and credentials.

3. HAMqtt::loop method needs to be called periodically (it doesn’t need to be called on each tick).

4. Device types need to be initialized after HAMqtt class (it will be described later in the documentation).

Here are the minimal boilerplate examples to get you started. Don’t worry if you have no idea what’s happening here; everything will be explained in detail in the following chapters.

Arduino Boilerplate

#include <Ethernet.h>
#include <ArduinoHA.h>

byte mac[] = {0x00, 0x10, 0xFA, 0x6E, 0x38, 0x4A};
EthernetClient client;
HADevice device(mac, sizeof(mac));
HAMqtt mqtt(client, device);

void setup() {
    Ethernet.begin(mac);

    // your setup logic goes here

    // MQTT broker connection (use your data here)
    mqtt.begin("192.168.1.50", "username", "password");
}

void loop() {
    Ethernet.maintain();
    mqtt.loop();

    // your loop logic goes here
}

ESP32/ESP8266 Boilerplate

#include <ESP8266WiFi.h>
#include <ArduinoHA.h>

WiFiClient client;
HADevice device;
HAMqtt mqtt(client, device);

void setup() {
    byte mac[WL_MAC_ADDR_LENGTH];
    WiFi.macAddress(mac);
    device.setUniqueId(mac, sizeof(mac));

    // you can skip this part if you're already maintaining the connection logic
    WiFi.begin("MyNetworkSSID", "MyPassword");
    while (WiFi.status() != WL_CONNECTED) {
        delay(500); // waiting for the connection
    }

    // your setup logic goes here

    // MQTT broker connection (use your data here)
    mqtt.begin("192.168.1.50", "username", "password");
}

void loop() {
    mqtt.loop();

    // your loop logic goes here
}