Feature Request: MQTT - only report valid data

[Argafal]

Hi folks, This is a great piece of software. It comes very handy for my own little solar installation and it looks amazing in Domoticz. Thanks to all of you who got this started and contributed to it.

I believe there is a small issue with the MQTT implementation. Currently it reports data such as the frequency, voltage, individual panel power all night, even though this data is no longer valid. Also, it skips to report the zero on the current total power. Therefore the current total power reports some small number all night, which a home automation system then integrates to a small (wrong) number of Wh of solar power produced throughout the night hours. This spoils the statistics.

Expected behaviour:
a) if a zero is read from the inverter a zero should be reported on mqtt
b) if new data is read from the inverter it should be reported on mqtt
c) if there is no new data from the inverter, nothing should be reported on mqtt
d) Ideally, the last thing reported on mqtt in the evening is a zero value

Questions:

1. Is there already a way to know that the inverter data was recently updated in app::loop() but not yet reported to mqtt?
2. Does the inverter send a "shutting down for the night" signal of sorts? If yes we could use this to send one last mqtt broadcast of "0 Watt" everywhere.

[Argafal]

I am attaching a patch that I believe fixes the reported behaviour in a neat way.
I did not yet find if there is a "shutting down for the night" signal.
If you like the patch, would you please add it to the repository?

diff.txt

[lumapu]

thank you for contributing, I will check that.

[elxsi]

Hi,

I think the mMqtt.loop(); should be called with with each ticker interval (and not only if new mqtt data is available), because otherwise the mqqt connection does not get refreshed:

if(checkTicker(&mTicker, 1000)) {
mMqtt.loop();
if(mMqttActive & mMqttNewDataAvail) {
...

Thanks!

[lumapu]

good point I'll give it a try. I'll check the documentation about the loop function how often it must be called at least.