Can't discover EM16 on a different VLAN

[rwlove]

Can you please allow your discovery process to discover devices on a different VLAN?

home-assistant/core#155970

[ashionky]

Need to be on the same network

[42u-dev]

Why can't this be fixed? Many of us have HA on another network or VLAN. We should be able to simply type in the IP address of the device to have it directly communicate to that IP. The fact that there is currently no way for me to integrate the device into HA is making me want to return it.

All my other devices support manual IP entry except this one.

[ashionky]

The current device firmware does not support it. Integrated discovery uses UDP to discover devices and requires them to be on the same network。

[bencardinal]

I just purchased an EM16 and I am disappointed to see this. All of my other IoT devices are on a separate VLAN and I use mDNS forwarding to discover and connect to them from my main LAN. This is a solid security practice and I imagine a lot of people running Home Assistant are doing something similar. Please consider adding this feature!

[mikeymasonic]

Just came here to express my disappointment that I cannot use this device on a VLAN, a lot of time and effort went into setting this up only find the HA integration doesn't have this basic feature. I will return the device before allowing it on my main network.

[mikeymasonic]

Welp, got Home Assistant and the Refoss Device on a VLAN talking to each other working via a udp brodcast relay plugin and some firewall rules in OPNSense, gonna leave this here in case anyone else needs the information in the future and happens to have an OPNSense (or similar) setup:

How to get Refoss EM16 to work on a VLAN with HomeAssistant via OPNSense

1. In OPNSense, install os-udpbroadcastrelay via System > Firmware > Plugins
2. Refresh your browser and go to Services > UDP Broadcast Relay, click Add (+) and put '9988' in Relay Port, select your VLAN and LAN interfaces under Relay Interfaces, leave Broadcast Address and Source Address empty, leave Use TTL for ID unchecked, set Instance ID to '1'.
3. Repeat these steps using port '9989' and set Instance ID to '2'
4. Setup a firewall rule (Firewall > Rules > LAN) Allow, Protocol: UDP, Source: your HA IP address (I created a firewall alias to make it more readable, you could optionally use LAN net to just see if it 'works', but you'll want to tighten this up afterwards), Destination: your Refoss EM16 IP address (or optionally IOT net), Ports '9988' - '9989'. Make sure the firewall rule is near the top of your rules, before any block rules.
5. Do the same firewall rule on the IOT interface but with the Refoss EM16 IP address (or optionally your IOT net).

Once you've hit "Apply" go into Home Assistant, via HACS download Refoss LAN. Add an instance of Refoss LAN, put in your IP address for your Refoss device and it should get discovered. If you get a generic error like "An unknown error has occurred", restart home assistant, that got it working for me after I had an unsuccessful initial try before setting up the UDP Broadcast Relay / Firewall rules in OPNsense.

Good luck out there!

[42u-dev]

@mikeymasonic nice work. I run a Unifi FW so unfortunately there's no equivalent.

[rwlove]

Good luck out there!

Won't work for me since I have different infra, but have you tested to see if your solution works after a HA restart?

[mikeymasonic]

@rwlove, it does!

[42u-dev]

Looks like the Meross LAN integration now works properly with the Refoss EM16. A few seconds after adding mine, the sensors populated.

The real fix for this seems to be implementing a direct HTTP connection instead of relying on UDP broadcasts. That is if the dev wants to fix this particular integration to work across VLANs.

[mikeymasonic]

@42u-dev, that's really great to hear! I'll check it out tonight and probably just remove the Refoss LAN integration / the UDP relay stuff I had to do in OPNSense make it work with my VLAN.