Home Assistant

Power Manifold connects to Home Assistant through an MQTT broker. Once connected, it appears as one device with every port and setting. No YAML configuration is required.

Connect it

Power ManifoldReports every port

MQTT1883, or 8883 with TLS

MQTT brokerMosquitto add-on or any other

MQTT

Home AssistantOne device, every port

1. Have an MQTT broker. If you don’t have one, install the Mosquitto broker add-on in Home Assistant, then add the MQTT integration. Create a Home Assistant user for Power Manifold to log in with.

2. Point Power Manifold at it. In the web interface’s Settings, fill in the MQTT broker (your Home Assistant’s address), the port (usually 1883) and the user and password. Press Save, then Reboot.

3. Find the device. In Home Assistant, go to Settings → Devices & services → MQTT. Power Manifold appears as a device named after it.

The device page. Ports you have named, like Desk phone, appear under their names.

If you use more than one Power Manifold, give each a different device name before connecting it.

To encrypt the connection to the broker, see MQTT security.

What you get

For each port

Entities are named after the port, so renaming a port renames them. Their entity IDs don’t change.

Entity	What it does
Switch	Turns the port on or off.
Power, voltage, current	Live readings, once a second.
Energy	Energy delivered since the controller started. Works with the Energy dashboard.
State	idle, active, throttled, fault and so on. Its attributes include the most recent fault and when it happened.
Charging	On while a device is plugged in and still charging.
Converter temperature, plug temperature	Blade temperatures. They read unknown while the port is off.
Priority, current limit, voltage cap, power-up state, switch off when charged, sleep timer	The port settings.
Hard reset	Briefly cuts the port so the device starts its connection over.
Re-announce	Sends the device the port’s offer again.
Events	Fires on plug-in, unplug, charged, faults and more. See below.

For the whole chassis

Entity	What it does
Total power, budget headroom, total energy	How much is being used and how much room is left.
Power budget	The chassis budget.
Fan	auto, on or off.
LED brightness	Port light brightness.
Charged below, charged after	When a device counts as charged.
Problem	On when something needs attention. Its detail attribute says what.
Bus voltage	The input voltage from your power supply.
Open BLE provisioning	Opens Bluetooth for ten minutes to change Wi-Fi.
Firmware update	Shows when a new release is out. Press Install to update. See Updates.
UPS sensors	Only with a UPS power supply connected, which is unofficial.

Automations

Each port has an events entity for use as an automation trigger. Its event types are:

Event	When
attached / detached	A device is plugged in or unplugged.
charged / charging	A device finished charging, or started again.
enabled / disabled	The port was switched on or off.
auto_off	Switch off once charged or the sleep timer turned the port off.
throttled / restored	The port was turned down for the budget, or got its power back.
fault	The port shut itself off. The text attribute says why.
inserted / removed / ready	The controller found a port, lost contact with it, or the port finished starting up.
contract	The device switched to a different voltage or current.
probe_failed	A blade didn’t respond while starting up.
updated	The blade’s firmware was updated.

Example: get a notification when a port faults.

triggers:
  - trigger: state
    entity_id: event.desk_phone_events
    not_from: unavailable
conditions:
  - condition: state
    entity_id: event.desk_phone_events
    attribute: event_type
    state: fault
actions:
  - action: notify.notify
    data:
      message: "Desk phone port: {{ trigger.to_state.attributes.text }}"

Example: power-cycle an unresponsive Raspberry Pi by turning its port’s switch off, waiting ten seconds, and turning it back on. This uses the port’s Switch entity, so a script or a dashboard button can do it.

Tip

For a phone or tablet that stays plugged into a port, turn on switch off when charged and use a time-based automation to turn the port back on in the morning.