Reticulum for Home Assistant

A Home Assistant custom integration that connects Home Assistant to a Reticulum network over TCP and exchanges LXMF messages with users.

The headline feature: a user can chat with the Home Assistant Assist agent over Reticulum. Any LXMF client (Sideband, MeshChat, Nomad Network) can send a message to Home Assistant's address; the text is routed through the Assist conversation pipeline and the answer is sent straight back — over LoRa, packet radio, I2P, TCP, or anything else Reticulum runs on.

It also exposes a notify entity, a rich service API, sensors, and bus events so LXMF messaging can drive and be driven by automations.

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How it fits together

┌────────────────────────┐        TCP         ┌─────────────────────────┐
│ Home Assistant (k8s)    │  TCPClientInterface│  Neighbouring machine    │
│                         │ ─────────────────► │  Reticulum instance      │
│  reticulum integration  │                    │  (TCPServerInterface)    │
│  • runs its own RNS     │ ◄───────────────── │  + any other interfaces  │
│  • LXMF delivery dest.  │                    │  (LoRa / RNode / I2P …)  │
│  • Assist bridge        │                    └─────────────────────────┘
└────────────────────────┘

Home Assistant runs a standalone, non-shared Reticulum instance inside its own process and reaches the wider network through the single TCPClientInterface pointing at the neighbouring stack. No shared-instance socket is used, which is what you want inside a container/pod.

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Requirements

• Home Assistant 2024.11 or newer.

• A reachable Reticulum instance on another machine with a TCPServerInterface enabled. Example ~/.reticulum/config on that machine:

  [interfaces]
    [[TCP Server Interface]]
      type = TCPServerInterface
      enabled = yes
      listen_ip = 0.0.0.0
      listen_port = 4242
  

  In Kubernetes, expose that port to the HA pod (Service / NodePort / host networking as appropriate). Do not enable kiss_framing on either side.

The integration declares its Python dependencies (rns, lxmf) in manifest.json; Home Assistant installs them automatically on first setup.

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Installation

HACS (custom repository)

1. HACS → ⋮ → Custom repositories.
2. Add this repository URL, category Integration.
3. Install Reticulum, then restart Home Assistant.

Manual

Copy custom_components/reticulum into your Home Assistant config/custom_components/ directory and restart.

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Configuration

Settings → Devices & Services → Add Integration → Reticulum.

Field	Meaning
Target host	Host/IP of the neighbouring Reticulum TCP server
Target port	Its listen_port (default 4242)
Display name	Name announced to other peers (e.g. Home Assistant)
Interface name	Label for the connection in the generated RNS config

On first start the integration generates a stable identity and announces it. Find your LXMF address on the LXMF address sensor, or in the log:

Reticulum ready. LXMF address: a1b2c3… (Home Assistant)

Add that address as a contact in Sideband/MeshChat and send a message — Assist will answer.

Options (⚙ → Configure)

• Route incoming messages to Assist – turn the chat bridge on/off.
• Assist agent / language – pick the conversation agent from the dropdown.

  Want free-form chat? The default Home Assistant agent only recognises device-control commands and will answer anything else with "Sorry, I couldn't understand that". To actually chat, install an LLM conversation integration (OpenAI, Google Generative AI, Anthropic, Ollama, …), then select that agent here.

• Reply to any sender / Allowed sender addresses – restrict who Assist will answer.
• Default recipient – address the notify.reticulum_send_message entity sends to (see Entities below).
• Greeting – optional message sent automatically the first time each sender contacts Home Assistant (once per sender, reset on restart). Blank = disabled.
• Default delivery method – direct, opportunistic, or propagated.
• Announce interval – periodic re-announce (seconds; 0 disables).
• Propagation node + sync interval – optional store-and-forward node so messages queue while HA is offline.
• Reticulum log level – 0–7.

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Entities

Entity	Description
sensor.reticulum_lxmf_address	This HA's LXMF address (share this with users)
sensor.reticulum_messages_received / _sent / _failed	Counters
sensor.reticulum_known_peers	Count + peers attribute (address, name, hops)
sensor.reticulum_last_message	Last inbound text + source/title attributes
sensor.reticulum_last_message_time	Timestamp of last inbound message
sensor.reticulum_received / _transmitted	Interface RX/TX byte counters
sensor.reticulum_bitrate	Interface bitrate
sensor.reticulum_rssi / _snr / _link_quality	Physical-link telemetry (disabled by default)
binary_sensor.reticulum_connected	Whether the TCP interface is online
button.reticulum_announce	Announce now
button.reticulum_sync_propagation_node	Pull queued messages now
notify.reticulum_send_message	notify entity that sends an LXMF message to the default recipient set in options — use it in automations/scripts (action: notify.send_message) or the Developer Tools; for arbitrary addresses use the reticulum.send_message service

The telemetry sensors read from the outbound interface. RX/TX bytes and bitrate work for the TCP link. RSSI, SNR and link quality only carry data when the underlying interface is a physical one (RNode/LoRa) — they stay unavailable on a plain TCP link, so they are disabled by default. Enable them from the device page if you run a physical interface.

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Services

reticulum.send_message

Send to any destination. Returns the message hash.

action: reticulum.send_message
data:
  destination: a1b2c3d4e5f6a7b8c9d0e1f2a3b4c5d6
  content: "The garage door is still open."
  title: "Home Assistant"
  method: direct        # direct | opportunistic | propagated

Other services: reticulum.announce, reticulum.request_path, reticulum.set_propagation_node, reticulum.sync_propagation.

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Events

• reticulum_message_received — {content, title, source, destination, timestamp, signature_validated, fields}
• reticulum_message_delivered — {message_hash, destination}
• reticulum_message_failed — {message_hash, destination}
• reticulum_announce_received — {destination, display_name, stamp_cost, hops}

Example automation — forward every inbound message to a mobile push

alias: Reticulum → phone
trigger:
  - platform: event
    event_type: reticulum_message_received
action:
  - action: notify.mobile_app_phone
    data:
      title: "Reticulum: {{ trigger.event.data.source[:8] }}"
      message: "{{ trigger.event.data.content }}"

Device triggers (automation UI)

Instead of raw event triggers you can pick these from the automation editor under the Reticulum device ("When… → Reticulum → …"):

• Message received
• Message delivered
• Message delivery failed
• Announce received (peer heard)

Each wraps the matching bus event, so trigger.event.data carries the same payload described above.

Example automation — alert over Reticulum when a door opens

alias: Door alert over Reticulum
trigger:
  - platform: state
    entity_id: binary_sensor.front_door
    to: "on"
action:
  - action: reticulum.send_message
    data:
      destination: a1b2c3d4e5f6a7b8c9d0e1f2a3b4c5d6
      content: "Front door opened at {{ now().strftime('%H:%M') }}"

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Notes & limitations

• Reticulum uses a single process-wide instance. Only one Reticulum config entry is allowed, and because RNS/LXMF cannot be cleanly torn down inside a running process, the running stack is reused across reloads. Changing the host/port (or recovering from a failed first start) therefore requires a full Home Assistant restart, not just an integration reload — a reload reuses the already-running stack. Option changes that don't touch the stack apply on reload.
• The identity is stored in config/reticulum/identity — back it up to keep the same address.
• RNS and LXMF are standalone-daemon-style libraries — both install SIGINT/SIGTERM handlers and atexit persistence in their constructors. To embed them cleanly the integration suppresses those signal handlers during init (so Home Assistant keeps ownership of SIGINT/SIGTERM — important under Kubernetes) and unregisters their blocking atexit persistence, persisting RNS/LXMF state itself, off the event loop, on the homeassistant_stop event. RNS still spawns a couple of non-daemon worker threads, so on shutdown you may see a "non-daemonic threads" notice and a short delay before the process exits (within the pod's termination grace period).
• Assist replies use the standard conversation pipeline, so whichever agent you select (built-in intents, a local LLM, a cloud LLM, …) is what answers.

License

MIT