👨‍💻 ESPHome: Nothing-to-firmware in 30 minutes

Last week, I wrote about the tech we deploy on my parent’s 100 acre property.

Our goal is to be able to quickly and cheaply integrate new sensors and controls. We want to be able to buy a flow meter / particulate matter sensor / pressure transducer / other crazy thing off AliExpress, and get it integrated into our control plane without it becoming a massive project.

Too many electronics and automation projects just die on the desk. We want the flexibility of our own electronics, but we want to be off the breadboard and into production as fast as we can.

As a software developer, the place I often getting tripped up is, amusingly, at the coding stage. Some fairly simple electronics suddenly need a lot of code to actually integrate well. Writing it yourself is a blackhole that’s easy to fall into.

Last year, I fell in love with ESPHome: the perfect piece of glue between ESP-based devices and Home Assistant.

Walk-through

I sat down and recorded a 30 minute walk-through of getting started with ESPHome.

To follow along, you’ll need only three things:

1. A running instance of Home Assistant
2. An M5Stack Atom Lite (or any other ESP-based device you’re already comfortable with)
3. A USB-C cable

It’ll take you through:

1. 00:40 – Why Home Assistant
2. 02:40 – Installing ESPHome
3. 03:20 – Creating your first ESPHome node
4. 06:00 – Handling secrets
5. 07:10 – Controlling the RGB LED on the M5Stack Atom Lite
6. 09:10 – Doing the first flash via USB, with esphome-flasher
7. 14:15 – Adopting the device in Home Assistant
8. 16:00 – Detecting the button on the M5Stack Atom Lite
9. 17:10 – Cleaner code with substitutions
10. 18:30 – Doing the subsequent flashes over-the-air
11. 20:45 – Adding light effects
12. 21:15 – Adding automation on the device
13. 23:50 – The firmware from my intercom project
14. 25:40 – Lightning detectors and particulate matter sensors
15. 26:30 – “Covers”, for garage doors, blinds, and pool covers
16. 27:40 – Opinions on Tasmota, in this context
17. 28:50 – Other devices, like the Shelly1

Final Code

Here’s the final code from this demo:

	substitutions:
	device_name: demo2
	friendly_name: Demo 2
	## Boilerplate
	esphome:
	name: ${device_name}
	platform: ESP32
	board: m5stack-core-esp32
	wifi:
	ssid: !secret wifi_ssid
	password: !secret wifi_password
	# Enable fallback hotspot (captive portal) in case wifi connection fails
	ap:
	ssid: Fallback ${device_name}
	captive_portal:
	logger:
	api:
	password: !secret esphome_secret
	ota:
	password: !secret esphome_secret
	## Device-specific
	light:
	– platform: fastled_clockless
	chipset: WS2812B
	pin: 27
	num_leds: 1
	rgb_order: GRB
	id: status_led
	name: ${friendly_name} Light
	effects:
	– random:
	– flicker:
	– addressable_rainbow:
	binary_sensor:
	– platform: gpio
	pin:
	number: 39
	inverted: true
	name: ${friendly_name} Button
	on_press:
	then:
	– light.toggle: status_led

view raw demo2.yaml hosted with ❤ by GitHub