Feature Request: Publish MAC Address as Home Assistant Device Connection in MQTT Discovery

[kymograph]

Is there an existing issue for this?

• I have searched the existing open and closed issues

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe

When NetAlertX publishes devices to Home Assistant via MQTT Discovery, the generated discovery payload includes device identifiers but does not include a Home Assistant device connection based on the device MAC address.

Currently the MQTT discovery payload contains something similar to:

{
  "device": {
    "identifiers": ["<device_id>_sensor"],
    "manufacturer": "NetAlertX",
    "name": "<device_name>"
  }
}

The MAC address is available elsewhere in the payload and is already passed into the MQTT publisher (mac=device["devMac"]), but it is not exposed in the device.connections field.

As a result, Home Assistant cannot associate NetAlertX entities with the same physical device discovered by other integrations (e.g. FRITZ!Box Tools, UniFi, Router integrations, etc.), leading to duplicate devices in the Home Assistant device registry.

Describe the solution you'd like

Add the MAC address as a Home Assistant device connection in all MQTT discovery payloads:

{
  "device": {
    "identifiers": ["<device_id>_sensor"],
    "connections": [
      ["mac", "AA:BB:CC:DD:EE:FF"]
    ],
    "manufacturer": "NetAlertX",
    "name": "<device_name>"
  }
}

and similarly for device_tracker discovery messages.

Describe alternatives you've considered

If automatic publication is considered a breaking change, a configuration option could be introduced:

MQTT_INCLUDE_MAC_CONNECTION=true

enabled by default for new installations.

Anything else?

The MAC address is already available within the MQTT publisher code and would only need to be added to the generated Home Assistant discovery payload. This appears to be a relatively small change with potentially significant usability benefits for Home Assistant users running multiple network-discovery integrations.

See also: https://developers.home-assistant.io/docs/device_registry_index/

Am I willing to test this? 🧪

• I will do my best to test this feature on the netlertx-dev image when requested within 48h and report bugs to help deliver a great user experience for everyone and not to break existing installations.

Can I help implement this? 👩‍💻👨‍💻

• Yes
• No

[jokob-sk]

This should be available/fixed in the next release.
It would be great if you could test the ghcr.io/netalertx/netalertx-dev-unsafe Docker image in ~15 minutes (or once the latest GitHub Action finishes).

⚠️ Please back up everything first, or ideally spin up a separate container (make sure you use a unique PORT and GRAPHQL_PORT if running instances concurrently) with its own DB and config (a copy of your current setup), as database changes may occur.

After updating:

• Click the 🔄 refresh button in the blue header at the top
• Hard refresh your browser cache (shift + reload) to force js and css files reload

👉 If I don’t receive confirmation that this works, I may revert the changes to avoid introducing bugs.

If you find NetAlertX useful, consider sharing the app on forums or socials, at your work, or share a quick review on Reddit or elsewhere to help support the project. See more ideas and how-to in the growth playbook.

Disclaimer: Running the dev container long-term may lead to data loss, as upgrade paths are not guaranteed.

Thanks in advance,
j

[kymograph]

Just tried it with the image: "ghcr.io/netalertx/netalertx-dev:latest" as dev-unsafe could not be pulled.

But it seems not to work with this one. It even seems like the MQTT devices in home assistant are not updated (anymore?).

The protocol seems to skip every device though I did not check how the log should usually look:

...
13:22:17 [MQTT] Existing, skip Device Name: Switch
13:22:17 [MQTT] MQTT disconnected: reasonCode=DisconnectFlags(is_disconnect_packet_from_server=False)
13:22:17 [MQTT]         Connection terminated, reason_code: DisconnectFlags(is_disconnect_packet_from_server=False)
13:22:17 [MQTT]         Reconnecting in 1 seconds...
13:22:17 [Plugins] SUCCESS for MQTT received 606 entries
13:22:17 [Plugins] Processing        : MQTT
13:22:31 [Plugin utils]  display_name :  MQTT publisher
13:22:31 [Plugins] Executing: python3 /app/front/plugins/_publisher_mqtt/mqtt.py
13:22:32 [MQTT](publisher) In script
13:22:33 [MQTT]         Connected to broker
13:22:33 [MQTT] Existing, skip Device Name: NetAlertX
...

I also left a comment here in the PR cause I would have expected at least this block would also need adaption.

[jokob-sk]

Thanks - you are right, wrong message body - should be fixed now.

Could you test the ghcr.io/netalertx/netalertx-dev Docker image in ~15 minutes (or once the latest GitHub Action finishes)?

[jokob-sk]

FYI if you need to force an update of existing devices, follow these steps: https://github.com/netalertx/NetAlertX/tree/main/front/plugins/_publisher_mqtt/#forcing-an-update

[kymograph]

Somehow some things seem broken now and it does not work as expected yet.

1.) The Plugins list under each device is gone. The entries can still be clicked but they are not shown. The MQTT plugin seems to be missing altogether (before a restart, the list was still shown without the MQTT plugin)

2.) The protocol now contains a lot of "Object not found" entries paired with "New sensor entry" for each device

20:25:01 [MQTT](publisher) In script
20:25:02 [MQTT] New sensor entry (name|mac|hash) : (NetAlertX||03c3100fbf0814c59eea416ccdf2e89c
20:25:02 [MQTT]         Connected to broker
20:25:04 [Plugin utils] 💬 INFO - Object not found {"plugin": "MQTT", "watchedValue3": "################################"} 
20:25:04 [MQTT] New sensor entry (name|mac|hash) : (NetAlertX||################################
20:25:06 [Plugin utils] 💬 INFO - Object not found {"plugin": "MQTT", "watchedValue3": "################################"} 
20:25:06 [MQTT] New sensor entry (name|mac|hash) : (NetAlertX||################################
20:25:08 [Plugin utils] 💬 INFO - Object not found {"plugin": "MQTT", "watchedValue3": "################################"} 
20:25:08 [MQTT] New sensor entry (name|mac|hash) : (NetAlertX||################################
20:25:10 [Plugin utils] 💬 INFO - Object not found {"plugin": "MQTT", "watchedValue3": "################################"} 
20:25:10 [MQTT] New sensor entry (name|mac|hash) : (NetAlertX||################################
20:25:12 [Plugin utils] 💬 INFO - Object not found {"plugin": "MQTT", "watchedValue3": "################################"} 
20:25:12 [MQTT] New sensor entry (name|mac|hash) : (NetAlertX||################################
20:25:14 [MQTT]         Estimated delay:  750 s  ( 12.5 min)
20:25:15 [Plugin utils] 💬 INFO - Object not found {"plugin": "MQTT", "watchedValue3": "################################"} 
20:25:15 [MQTT] New sensor entry (name|mac|hash) : (Internet|Internet|################################

3.) In Home Assistant, I deleted the MQTT device with the hope it would then be merged. But the MQTT device was just recreated as before. It seems the merging logic in HA is not as straightforward as it seemed.

I do not have any good further ideas right now on how to solve those issues, but let me know if I can help somehow. Its not urgent to get it solved quickly, would just be nice to reduce the clutter for single devices from multiple integrations.

[jokob-sk]

Thanks for the above:

1. This seems like a caching issue - try navigating to the devices list and click the refresh button in the app header and then navigate back to the plugins list.
2. [Plugin utils] 💬 INFO - Object not found is exactly what I would expect when clearing the plugin entries in NAX - it means they are re-pushed to home assistant.
3. You shouldn't need to clear anything in home assistant. The MQTT entries are overwritten with newer values.

If you can't see the value being pushed to Home Assistant I would recommend using the MQTT Explorer or similar to inspect the payloads, to make sure the value is sent in the first place to make sure you are using the latest dev build. See the example below.

{"state_topic": "system-sensors/device_tracker/mac_08_3f_21_3d_eb_bd/state", "json_attributes_topic": "system-sensors/device_tracker/mac_08_3f_21_3d_eb_bd/attributes", "name": "is_home", "payload_home": "home", "payload_not_home": "away", "unique_id": "mac_08_3f_21_3d_eb_bd_device_tracker_is_home", "icon": "mdi:home", "device": {"identifiers": ["mac_08_3f_21_3d_eb_bd_sensor", "mac_08_3f_21_3d_eb_bd_device_tracker_is_home"], "manufacturer": "NetAlertX", "model": "motorola-edge-50-neo", "name": "motorola-edge-50-neo", "connections": [["mac", "08:3f:21:3d:eb:bd"]]}}

Try re-pulling the latest ghcr.io/netalertx/netalertx-dev-unsafe Docker image.

[kymograph]

Checking with mqtt Explorer is a good idea. I will try to test again on the weekend.

[kymograph]

Just checked again and while it took a few days to pick up the changes, now the devices are nicely connected, two examples:

Thanks for the quick implementation!

[jokob-sk]

Thanks for confirming and glad to hear it's working.

If you find NetAlertX useful, consider sharing the app on forums or socials, at your work, or share a quick review on Reddit or elsewhere to help support the project. See more ideas and how-to in the growth playbook.

[jokob-sk]

Releasing in ~1h -> closing