---
layout: page
title: "MQTT Room Presence"
description: "Instructions on how to track room presence within Home Assistant."
date: 2016-08-21 03:58
sidebar: true
comments: false
sharing: true
footer: true
logo: mqtt.png
ha_category: Presence Detection
ha_release: 0.27
ha_iot_class: depends
---

The `mqtt_room` sensor platform allows you to detect the indoor location of devices using MQTT clients.

## {% linkable_title Configuration %}

To use this device tracker in your installation, add the following to your `configuration.yaml` file:

```yaml
# Example configuration.yaml entry
sensor:
  platform: mqtt_room
  device_id: 123testid
  name: 'Cool device'
  state_topic: 'room_presence'
  timeout: 5
  away_timeout: 60
```

{% configuration %}
device_id:
  description: The device id to track for this sensor.
  required: true
  type: string
name:
  description: The name of the sensor.
  required: false
  default: Room Sensor
  type: string
state_topic:
  description: The topic that contains all subtopics for the rooms.
  required: false
  default: room_presence
  type: string
timeout:
  description: "The time in seconds after which a room presence state is considered old. An example: device1 is reported at scanner1 with a distance of 1. No further updates are sent from scanner1. After 5 seconds scanner2 reports device1 with a distance of 2. The old location info is discarded in favor of the new scanner2 information as the timeout has passed."
  required: false
  default: 5
  type: integer
away_timeout:
  description: The time in seconds after which the state should be set to `not_home` if there were no updates. `0` disables the check.
  required: false
  default: 0
  type: integer
{% endconfiguration %}

Example JSON that should be published to the room topics:

```json
{
  "id": "123testid",
  "name": "Test Device",
  "distance": 5.678
}
```

### {% linkable_title Setting up clients %}

This component works with any software that is sending data in the given format.
Each client should post the discovered devices in its own subtopic of the configured topic.
Instead of developing your own application, you can also use any of these already existing clients:

- [**room-assistant**](https://github.com/mKeRix/room-assistant): looks for Bluetooth LE beacons, based on Node.js
- [**Happy Bubbles Presence Server**](https://github.com/happy-bubbles/presence): presence detection server for Happy Bubbles BLE-scanning devices, based on Go
