Your cisterns, in your smart home.

Before you start

Three things — and you almost certainly have the last one already.

What shows up

Each cistern arrives as one device, named as you named it in the CMS app.

Setting it up

Do these in order — step 3 will not find anything until steps 1 and 2 are done.

1. 1

   Get your connection details

   Sign in at your dashboard, open Home Assistant in the sidebar, and click Generate password. The page then shows everything below.

   Broker host

   cms.yourideasvi.com

   Port

   8883

   Transport

   TLS / SSL — enabled

   Username

   your account ID, e.g. 9b57e82d-aa26-…

   Password

   Generated on the page

   Discovery prefix

   cms/ha/<your-account-id>/discovery

   Copy the password now

   It is shown once and stored only as a one-way hash, so we cannot look it up or send it to you later. Lost it? Generate a new one — that instantly invalidates the old password.

   Your username is the account ID, not your email address. Using your email will fail to connect.

2. 2

   Add the MQTT integration

   1. In Home Assistant, go to Settings → Devices & Services → Add Integration.
   2. Search for and choose MQTT.
   3. Enter the broker host, port, username and password from step 1.
   4. Enable TLS if your version shows the option. Leave “ignore broker certificate validation” switched off — our broker uses a standard publicly trusted certificate, so validation simply succeeds.
   5. Submit, then open the MQTT integration’s Configure page.
   6. Change Discovery prefix from its default to your own:

   cms/ha/<your-account-id>/discovery

   The step people miss

   Home Assistant defaults the discovery prefix to homeassistant. With that default it connects perfectly and then never finds your cisterns. If your devices do not appear, check this before anything else.

   Save, then restart Home Assistant.

3. 3

   Confirm your cisterns appeared

   Go to Settings → Devices & Services → MQTT → devices. Each cistern should be listed by name with its entities beneath it.

   If a cistern is offline right now, its entities read Unavailable — except Connectivity, which stays readable on purpose, so you can build automations that fire when a cistern drops off the network.

Two automations to start from

Entity IDs follow your cistern names — copy the real ones from the device page.

Tell me when a cistern runs low

automation:
  - alias: "Cistern low water"
    trigger:
      - platform: state
        entity_id: binary_sensor.main_cistern_low_water
        to: "on"
    action:
      - service: notify.mobile_app_my_phone
        data:
          title: "Low water"
          message: >-
            Main cistern is at
            {{ states('sensor.main_cistern_tank_level') }}%

Protect the reserve overnight (valve models)

automation:
  - alias: "Protect reserve overnight"
    trigger:
      - platform: numeric_state
        entity_id: sensor.main_cistern_tank_level
        below: 10
    condition:
      - condition: time
        after: "22:00:00"
        before: "06:00:00"
    action:
      - service: valve.close_valve
        target:
          entity_id: valve.main_cistern_valve

Apple Home and Siri

You do not need a separate bridge. Once your cisterns are in Home Assistant, turn on Home Assistant’s built-in HomeKit Bridge integration and pick which cistern entities to expose. They then appear in the Apple Home app and answer to Siri.

What your login can and cannot do

• Only your own cisterns. The broker enforces this per account. There is no path to another customer’s data, and none to the raw device command channel.
• Read-only, except valve control. A valve request is re-checked on our side to confirm you own that cistern before it is acted on.
• Encrypted in transit. TLS on port 8883.
• Revocable at any time. Turn it off from the Home Assistant page in your dashboard. Generating a new password also immediately invalidates the previous one.
• Treat the password as a credential. Anyone holding it and your account ID can read your cistern data and operate your valves.

If something is not working

In rough order of how often each one turns out to be the cause.