Unique Identifier from the API?

[ledhed-jgh]

First and foremost, thank you! I've really enjoyed this project, and all your hard work.

I know you aren't updating code on a regular basis, but if you do happen to make some changes (since you are still using your HM), I have a feature request. :)

I maintain a HeaterMeter integration for Home Assistant, and I'd like to get it working with multi-device support. In order to do that I need a way to uniquely identify each HeaterMeter. I could do this with the MAC or the RPi serial number, or even the hostname. Unfortunately, the API doesn't provide this information (at least from what I can see in the documentation and testing). I am able to get the hostname from ZeroConf, but that leaves a gap when the user doesn't have mDNS or they manually set up the integration.

So my request is simply for a way to query a unique ID from the API.

If you could squeeze that in the next time you make an update that would be amazing.

Thanks again!

[CapnBry]

Hello! Yeah I could see where that would be advantageous to have, to be able to tell them apart. What I used for the HeaterMeter devices page as a unique ID is the serial number of the Pi SoC.

I do not expose that anywhere via the API though, and I'm not sure I even have the ability to build firmware any more. I have the build system in a VM and it is stored... I do not even know where. Somewhere in backups.

The number is available on a page I created in the luci system, so maybe you can pull that via a sort of out-of-band HTTP request?
http://XXXX/luci/admin/system/rpi
Then pull $('#cbi-rpi-Boot-cpu_serial .cbi-value-field').textContent.trim()? Ugh unfortunately that page is behind a login though :/

The suggested way

The way I designed device discovery to work for third party integrations would be to pull your local HeaterMeter Device Registry and it will list unique IDs for every HeaterMeter on your network.
http://heatermeter.com/devices/?fmt=json

I understand that this is fine for discovery but maybe not so great for continuously running HA integrations where the HeaterMeter addresses might change. I think it would be the first step in any new connection / reconnect in your integration. Pull the external API to get the device list, then your integration would have the unique IDs for all the HeaterMeters defined in HA and be able to connect to their IPs.