WORKING!
Perhaps this addition should be added to the open post. I did read up, but missed this essential part.
This is the mqtt section in my configuration.yaml file:
mqtt:
broker: “xxx.xxx.x.xxx:1883”
username: !secret mqtt_username
password: !secret mqtt_password
discovery: true
discovery_prefix: homeassistant
birth_message:
topic: ‘hass/status’
payload: ‘online’
will_message:
topic: ‘hass/status’
payload: ‘offline’
