Computer2Mqtt

This project is a multi-system and multi-OS adaptation of mac2mqtt. It allows you to execute any command on your system, providing endless possibilities for automation and control.

Requirements

This assumes you have direnv and uv installed

Simply run direnv allow to setup the environment, you can read the contents of .envrc to see what it does behind the scenes.

Setup

1. Clone this repository to your local machine.
2. Run direnv allow in the project directory. This will set up the Python environment using pyenv.
3. Create a computer2mqtt.yaml by copying computer2mqtt-example.yaml configuration file in the project root. There are 2 important sections first the mqtt config, and second the commands you want to run. In the example below these are commands for macs to turn on/off the display. This should be changed to commands for your target system. Possibility is endless.

mqtt:
  ip: 192.168.1.100
  port: 1883
  user: username
  password: password


commands:
  # Example mac command to wake/sleep display
  displaysleep: "pmset displaysleepnow"
  displaywake: "caffeinate -u -t 1"

4. Run computer2mqtt and note down the Sanitized hostname: Mac-mini, Mac-mini in this case.
5. Set up Home Assistant Scripts to trigger commands. Here is an example from my scripts.yaml file in Home Assistant

macmini_displaysleep:
  alias: Mac Mini Display Sleep
  icon: mdi:laptop
  sequence:
    - service: mqtt.publish
      data:
        topic: "mac2mqtt/{device_name}/command/displaysleep"
        payload: "displaysleep"

macmini_displaywake:
  alias: Mac Mini Display Wake
  icon: mdi:laptop
  sequence:
    - service: mqtt.publish
      data:
        topic: "mac2mqtt/{device_name}/command/displaywake"
        payload: "displaywake"

Replace {device_name} with the name of your device from the previous step!

Running in the background

To run the script in the background, you can use the screen command. screen is a full-screen window manager that multiplexes a physical terminal between several processes.

1. Start a new screen session with name of your choice with the command screen -S {mysession}.
2. Run the script with the command computer2mqtt.
3. Detach from the screen session with the command Ctrl-a d.
4. You can reattach to the session at any time with the command screen -r {mysession}. This will keep the script running in the background, even if you close the terminal.