Pixels Dice Home Assistant Integration

This custom component integrates Pixels Dice with Home Assistant, allowing you to monitor their roll states and manage their connection.

Features

• Sensor Entities: Provides sensors for roll state, face value, battery level, battery state, last seen time, and RSSI.
• Presence Binary Sensor: Indicates when the dice is advertising over Bluetooth. It turns on when detected nearby and off when out of range.
• Autoconnect Switch: A switch entity that allows you to control whether Home Assistant should automatically connect to the die when it's detected.
• Connect/Disconnect Buttons: Provides buttons to manually connect and disconnect from the die.
• Connect/Disconnect Services: Offers Home Assistant services to manually connect to and disconnect from your Pixels Dice, helping to conserve battery life.
• Device Triggers: Rolling state and face value are available as device triggers for automations.

Installation (HACS)

To install this integration via HACS (Home Assistant Community Store), follow these steps:

1. Add this repository to HACS: Open HACS in your Home Assistant instance, go to "Integrations", click on the three dots in the top right corner, and select "Custom repositories".

   • Repository URL: https://github.com/jaxzin/gamewithpixels-ha
   • Category: Integration

2. Install the integration: Once the repository is added, search for "Pixels Dice" in HACS and install it.

3. Restart Home Assistant.

Alternatively, you can use the HACS button below:

Manual Installation

1. Copy the pixels_dice folder from this repository into your Home Assistant's custom_components directory.

   # Example: If your Home Assistant config directory is /config
   cp -r custom_components/pixels_dice /config/custom_components/

2. Restart Home Assistant.

Configuration

Add the following to your configuration.yaml file:

pixels_dice:
  name: "Brian PD6" # Replace with the actual name of your Pixels die

Sensors

This integration creates several sensors to monitor your Pixels die:

• State Sensor: sensor.your_die_name_state
  • Displays the current state of the die, such as "Connected", "Rolling", "Landed: 6", etc.
• Face Sensor: sensor.your_die_name_face
  • Shows the current face-up value of the die.
• Battery Level Sensor: sensor.your_die_name_battery
  • Reports the battery percentage.
• Battery State Sensor: sensor.your_die_name_battery_state
  • Shows the charging status of the die (e.g., "ok", "charging", "low").
• Last Seen Sensor: sensor.your_die_name_last_seen
  • A timestamp of when the die was last detected by Home Assistant.
• RSSI Sensor: sensor.your_die_name_rssi
  • The Received Signal Strength Indicator (RSSI) in dBm, which indicates how strong the Bluetooth signal is.

Device Triggers

Face and state sensors appear as device triggers so you can easily create automations for specific roll values or states without referencing entity IDs.

Autoconnect Switch

This integration creates a switch entity for each Pixels die, named something like switch.brian_pd6_autoconnect. This switch controls whether Home Assistant will automatically connect to the die when it comes into Bluetooth range.

When Autoconnect is turned on:

• Home Assistant will actively listen for the die's Bluetooth advertisements.
• As soon as the die is detected, Home Assistant will establish a connection.
• This is useful for instantly capturing roll data but may consume more battery.

When Autoconnect is turned off:

• Home Assistant will still detect the die's presence, but it will not automatically connect.
• You can still manually connect to the die using the pixels_dice.connect service.
• This is the recommended mode for conserving the die's battery life.

Connect/Disconnect Buttons

For each die, this integration provides two button entities:

• Connect Button: button.your_die_name_connect
• Disconnect Button: button.your_die_name_disconnect

These buttons allow you to manually control the Bluetooth connection to your Pixels die. Pressing the "Connect" button will initiate a connection, while the "Disconnect" button will terminate it. This is particularly useful when you have Autoconnect turned off but want to temporarily connect to check the die's status or roll it.

Services

This integration provides the following services:

pixels_dice.connect

Connects to the specified Pixels Dice.

Service Data (YAML):

entity_id: sensor.pixels_dice_brian_pd6 # Replace with your sensor's entity ID

Presence Sensor

The integration creates a binary sensor named after your die, such as Brian PD6 Presence. The sensor is on while Bluetooth advertisements from the die are detected and turns off once those advertisements stop.

pixels_dice.disconnect

Disconnects from the specified Pixels Dice.

Service Data (YAML):

entity_id: sensor.pixels_dice_brian_pd6 # Replace with your sensor's entity ID