Advice on what esp8266 firmware to use on the sonoff's - Espurna or espHome or espEasy ( migrating from tasmota )

Third party integrations
1

Hi all,

I know this has been kind of answered a few times in different threads but most are old and it is kind of being discussed individually in few threads recently. But i could do with some advice on which one is easier get up and working , most stable overall and works well with home assistant .

As recently discussed in a few threads and on the Github issues page, Tasmota has been quite unstable with Mqtt connection lately, I believe it’s to do with the core version moving from 2.3.0 to 2.4.2.

Unfortunately like most people I wanted the auto discovery of the devices with Home assistant and this required me to upgrade from my relatively stable version 6.3.0 to the latest 6.4.1 which has caused my Sonoff T1’s to drop the Mqtt connection every few minutes.
This isn’t specific to Home assistant as I am in the process of transitioning from Openhab and it had a the same problem with them as well.

That aside I find the Tasmota team very eager to brush a side issues on the Github page and close as many issues as quickly as possible solved or not, also being quite blunt and rude in communicating as well.

So like others I wish to migrate across to a more stable option that integrates well with HA, from my research I have seen that of the 3, Espurna and EspHome seem to be the most user friendly although EspEasy seems the most mature firmware.

I see that EspHome can integrate using API instead of Mqtt with home assistant and honestly I not 100% sure what that means although I have a rough idea, but I’ve read that this can cause a few instability issues ?

I almost want a solution that is kind of setup and leave, that’s stable, but reasonably user friendly to get started.

what’s everyone’s opinion ?

2

I prefer esphome, and you can use api or mqtt. Me personally, I haven’t had any stability issues with my sonoffs, ezp8266s and esp32s running esphome.

3

Another vote for ESPHome. I just moved all of my stuff from Tasmota to ESPHome. Very easy to do,

4

Does EspHome work with all sonoffs ? I have Sonoff T1’s and a Sonoff switch S20 .

5

Just starting with ESPHome and it seems really good. The API info is here https://esphome.io/components/api

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As far as I know it does but it may not have any “cookie cutter” configurations for some devices yet. Like the iFan02.

7

Well I’m definitely steering more towards EspHome , am I right in saying it was developed by someone in the home assistant community?

Also it’s great news I can flash it via the tasmota interface, so I don’t have to remove the T1’s

8

Yes, and yes. :slightly_smiling_face:

9

And the work put into the esphome documentation is very impressive.

10

That has unfortunately been my experience as well.

I disagree. I personally have found it all but impossible to work out what I actually need in a YAML file. My needs are basic - to emulate the tasmota setup for a Sonoff SV and a Sonoff S22 - with the lights performing as per Tasmota. I am yet to find anything in the docs that explains the options in a YAML file and why you may or may not want to add them and what exactly they do and why you may or may not want to include them.

11

I came from espeasy and espurna and other custom codes, didn’t really delve into tasmota. But, my needs have been pretty basic as well. Probably the hardest, if it was even hard, was using a single esp32 to drive 16 relays, have the 2 status lights act the way I wanted and have the BT enabled (waiting to receive my miflora order). For my needs the docs were great.
Also going to see if I can cram in the OLED as well, once I find my OLED, i know i put it somewhere.

12

Is it possible to edit the documentation as a community on the site for other users who may have the same devices ?

Is there a benefit in using the API over Mqtt?

13

Unfortunately it does not appear to be a wiki site, so I would guess no.

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15

This is great ! Maybe we can get a few people to put up examples of their .yaml files for their devices .

16

I suggest you actually read the page, it details the advantages. TO be sure I haven’t tried the api. I have read the page and pointed it out for you to read the same as what I read. I am not going to repeat or paraphrase the page I have already pointed to.

Again, you haven’t read it, or you would have seen the link “Edit this page on Github”.

TL;DR pay attention :slight_smile:

17

Whoops my bad ! Laziness prevailed a bit then. I have just read the API docs and it seems quite an obvious benefit to implement instead of mqtt.

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18

Depends on what the case use is. For some I use ESPEasy and others I use Tasmota.

For basic on/off Tasmota works just well.

19

Unfortunately for me I’ve migrated all tasmotas to esphome and regret it few hours later. Rockstable sonoffs few meters away from APs started to became unavailable or got problems with reconnecting.
Also some new tasmotas have this issue, might be connected with sdk newer than 2.3.0 and stable 2.3.0 is not supported by esphome…

20

My experience was the exact opposite. i moved to esphome due to flakiness of tasmota recently with dropping off all the time. Esphome-> hasn’t missed a beat.

wonder if you may have some wifi issues not apparent as if its affecting both platforms, something else could be at play