Home assistant not reading data, JSON corrupted?

[ThorAlex87]

Hi! I've been having some issues with home assistant and the ams reader, and in trying to figure it out i deleted the ams reader from home assistant. Now I cannot get home assistant to discover it again, even after factory resetting the device and rebooting everything. I can't find any way to discover it manually either. Anyone know how to fix this?

[gskjold]

Weird, I have just tested this now in my development environment, and deleting the device in HA and then rebooting the device will immediately restore it in HA

[ThorAlex87]

Thanks. My main issue is that home assistant stops reading the data from the reader for no apparent reason, so i guess it's also not wanting to rediscover either. The previous times I've just done a factory reset of the reader and everything worked fine again for a few days, but this time i deleted it from home assistant first to see if it made a difference. Not the difference I hoped for...

[ThorAlex87]

This is weird. I have now completely reinstalled home assistant, reinstalled the mqtt broker addon and mqtt integration, factory reset the reader and manually set it up again and it still refuses to discover the reader even if mqtt seems to be working fine. I get this error, looks similar to what i was getting the previous times:

Logger: homeassistant.components.mqtt.client
Source: components/mqtt/client.py:817
Integration: MQTT (documentation, issues)
First occurred: 15:25:20 (41 occurrences)
Last logged: 15:31:22

Can't decode payload b'{"name":"Current day used","stat_t":"pow-u//realtime","uniq_id":"ams-antonhaugen_dayuse","obj_id":"ams-antonhaugen_dayuse","unit_of_meas":"kWh","val_tpl":"{{ value_json.day.use | is_defined }}","dev_cla":"energy","dev":{"ids":["ams-antonhaugen"],"name":"AMS reader","mdl":"Pow-U+","sw":"6e8233e","mf":"amsleser.no","cu":"http://\xac\x13\xfe?\x0f.local/"}, "stat_cla" :"total_increasing"}' on homeassistant/sensor/ams-antonhaugen_dayuse/config with encoding utf-8 (for <Job None HassJobType.Callback <function async_start.<locals>.async_discovery_message_received at 0x7f6b43a0e0>>)
Can't decode payload b'{"name":"Current month used","stat_t":"pow-u//realtime","uniq_id":"ams-antonhaugen_monthuse","obj_id":"ams-antonhaugen_monthuse","unit_of_meas":"kWh","val_tpl":"{{ value_json.month.use | is_defined }}","dev_cla":"energy","dev":{"ids":["ams-antonhaugen"],"name":"AMS reader","mdl":"Pow-U+","sw":"6e8233e","mf":"amsleser.no","cu":"http://\xac\x13\xfe?\x0f.local/"}, "stat_cla" :"total_increasing"}' on homeassistant/sensor/ams-antonhaugen_monthuse/config with encoding utf-8 (for <Job None HassJobType.Callback <function async_start.<locals>.async_discovery_message_received at 0x7f6b43a0e0>>)
Can't decode payload b'{"name":"Current month peak 1","stat_t":"pow-u//realtime","uniq_id":"ams-antonhaugen_peaks1","obj_id":"ams-antonhaugen_peaks1","unit_of_meas":"kWh","val_tpl":"{{ value_json.peaks[1] | is_defined }}","dev_cla":"energy","dev":{"ids":["ams-antonhaugen"],"name":"AMS reader","mdl":"Pow-U+","sw":"6e8233e","mf":"amsleser.no","cu":"http://\xac\x13\xfe?\x0f.local/"}}' on homeassistant/sensor/ams-antonhaugen_peaks1/config with encoding utf-8 (for <Job None HassJobType.Callback <function async_start.<locals>.async_discovery_message_received at 0x7f6b43a0e0>>)
Can't decode payload b'{"name":"Current month peak 2","stat_t":"pow-u//realtime","uniq_id":"ams-antonhaugen_peaks2","obj_id":"ams-antonhaugen_peaks2","unit_of_meas":"kWh","val_tpl":"{{ value_json.peaks[2] | is_defined }}","dev_cla":"energy","dev":{"ids":["ams-antonhaugen"],"name":"AMS reader","mdl":"Pow-U+","sw":"6e8233e","mf":"amsleser.no","cu":"http://\xac\x13\xfe?\x0f.local/"}}' on homeassistant/sensor/ams-antonhaugen_peaks2/config with encoding utf-8 (for <Job None HassJobType.Callback <function async_start.<locals>.async_discovery_message_received at 0x7f6b43a0e0>>)
Can't decode payload b'{"name":"Current month peak 3","stat_t":"pow-u//realtime","uniq_id":"ams-antonhaugen_peaks3","obj_id":"ams-antonhaugen_peaks3","unit_of_meas":"kWh","val_tpl":"{{ value_json.peaks[3] | is_defined }}","dev_cla":"energy","dev":{"ids":["ams-antonhaugen"],"name":"AMS reader","mdl":"Pow-U+","sw":"6e8233e","mf":"amsleser.no","cu":"http://\xac\x13\xfe?\x0f.local/"}}' on homeassistant/sensor/ams-antonhaugen_peaks3/config with encoding utf-8 (for <Job None HassJobType.Callback <function async_start.<locals>.async_discovery_message_received at 0x7f6b43a0e0>>)

Any ideas?

[ThorAlex87]

I've updated the title to reflect the main issue better. I've now completely reinstalled home assistant and factory reset the pow-U+, and both are set up manually from the beginning without loading backups to eliminate configuration issues getting transferred. Still nothing...
Running home assistant OS on a rpi4, brand new SD card yesterday and new SSD data drive (was using an old HDD, so I took the opportunity to upgrade).

This log was copied with a fresh home assistant install, with only MQTT server and broker installed and nothing else:

Logger: homeassistant.components.mqtt.client
Source: components/mqtt/client.py:817
Integration: MQTT (documentation, issues)
First occurred: 20:37:25 (19 occurrences)
Last logged: 20:37:25

Can't decode payload b'{"name":"Current day used","stat_t":"pow-u//realtime","uniq_id":"ams-antonhaugen_dayuse","obj_id":"ams-antonhaugen_dayuse","unit_of_meas":"kWh","val_tpl":"{{ value_json.day.use | is_defined }}","dev_cla":"energy","dev":{"ids":["ams-antonhaugen"],"name":"AMS reader","mdl":"Pow-U+","sw":"6e8233e","mf":"amsleser.no","cu":"http://|\xf7\xfd?\x0f.local/"}, "stat_cla" :"total_increasing"}' on homeassistant/sensor/ams-antonhaugen_dayuse/config with encoding utf-8 (for <Job None HassJobType.Callback <function async_start.<locals>.async_discovery_message_received at 0x7f643dcdc0>>)
Can't decode payload b'{"name":"Current month used","stat_t":"pow-u//realtime","uniq_id":"ams-antonhaugen_monthuse","obj_id":"ams-antonhaugen_monthuse","unit_of_meas":"kWh","val_tpl":"{{ value_json.month.use | is_defined }}","dev_cla":"energy","dev":{"ids":["ams-antonhaugen"],"name":"AMS reader","mdl":"Pow-U+","sw":"6e8233e","mf":"amsleser.no","cu":"http://|\xf7\xfd?\x0f.local/"}, "stat_cla" :"total_increasing"}' on homeassistant/sensor/ams-antonhaugen_monthuse/config with encoding utf-8 (for <Job None HassJobType.Callback <function async_start.<locals>.async_discovery_message_received at 0x7f643dcdc0>>)
Can't decode payload b'{"name":"Current month peak 1","stat_t":"pow-u//realtime","uniq_id":"ams-antonhaugen_peaks1","obj_id":"ams-antonhaugen_peaks1","unit_of_meas":"kWh","val_tpl":"{{ value_json.peaks[1] | is_defined }}","dev_cla":"energy","dev":{"ids":["ams-antonhaugen"],"name":"AMS reader","mdl":"Pow-U+","sw":"6e8233e","mf":"amsleser.no","cu":"http://|\xf7\xfd?\x0f.local/"}}' on homeassistant/sensor/ams-antonhaugen_peaks1/config with encoding utf-8 (for <Job None HassJobType.Callback <function async_start.<locals>.async_discovery_message_received at 0x7f643dcdc0>>)
Can't decode payload b'{"name":"Current month peak 2","stat_t":"pow-u//realtime","uniq_id":"ams-antonhaugen_peaks2","obj_id":"ams-antonhaugen_peaks2","unit_of_meas":"kWh","val_tpl":"{{ value_json.peaks[2] | is_defined }}","dev_cla":"energy","dev":{"ids":["ams-antonhaugen"],"name":"AMS reader","mdl":"Pow-U+","sw":"6e8233e","mf":"amsleser.no","cu":"http://|\xf7\xfd?\x0f.local/"}}' on homeassistant/sensor/ams-antonhaugen_peaks2/config with encoding utf-8 (for <Job None HassJobType.Callback <function async_start.<locals>.async_discovery_message_received at 0x7f643dcdc0>>)
Can't decode payload b'{"name":"Current month peak 3","stat_t":"pow-u//realtime","uniq_id":"ams-antonhaugen_peaks3","obj_id":"ams-antonhaugen_peaks3","unit_of_meas":"kWh","val_tpl":"{{ value_json.peaks[3] | is_defined }}","dev_cla":"energy","dev":{"ids":["ams-antonhaugen"],"name":"AMS reader","mdl":"Pow-U+","sw":"6e8233e","mf":"amsleser.no","cu":"http://|\xf7\xfd?\x0f.local/"}}' on homeassistant/sensor/ams-antonhaugen_peaks3/config with encoding utf-8 (for <Job None HassJobType.Callback <function async_start.<locals>.async_discovery_message_received at 0x7f643dcdc0>>)

More googling seems to point the JSON data being corrupted somehow, and I noticed there is a url in there that does not look normal: http://|\xf7\xfd?\x0f.local/. Anyone have any Ideas how this can happen? What is the URL supposed to be?

I do have another older Pow-U at my previous place that I will try to remember to pickup on my way home this evening to test if that gives different results.

Thanks

[ThorAlex87]

And just like that I had a thought just after posting this: In the ams reader settings there is a field "Hostname for URL". This automatically grabs the reader hostname, in my case "ams-antonhaugen" and adds .local to the end. I removed the "-" so it became "amsantonhaugen.local" and suddenly everything seems to work again.

It's weird, I've had the same hostname for over a month before the problems started and a similar one in my previous place with no issues, i wonder what changed...

I'll leave his here in case someone else get similar issues, hopefully someone finds it helpful.