ESPHome

About

ESPHome is an open-source firmware framework that greatly simplifies the process of creating custom firmware for popular WiFi and Bluetooth microcontrollers.

Most of the ESPHome-based devices in our environment run on Espressif ESP32 microprocessors that are packaged on Seeed (sic) Studios XIAO ESP32 line of development boards.

Getting Started

ESPHome software can be installed on your workstation. or.on a home assistant server.

The latter choice is not recommended, primarily because

• it is difficult to connect a device to the home assistant server’s USB port, which is necessary to install Firmware for the first time on a device, and
• The build process is SLOW. The latter dramatically increases the configure, build, flash, and test workflow, making iteration impractical. Conversely, iterating on a (beefy) workstation is fast enough.

Running ESPHome on Home Assistant is not recommended. Install it on your workstation. Then start and run the server from a command line. Once the server is started, you can go to http://localhost:6052.