All builds failing in ESPHome Builder on HA OS on Raspberry Pi 3

ESPHome
1

Hi,
i am running ESPHome (2025.6.2) on HA OS (Core 2025.6.3, Supervisor 2025.06.2, OS 15.2) on a Raspberry Pi 3.
I didn’t update my ESPHome devices in a while and also wanted to add some new devices, but for some reason every build keeps failing, no matter which type of board either (ESP8266 and Pico W).
I even tried to do completely barebones configs (as in just the standard stuff, no sensors or anything) and it still keeps failing, usually at api_comonent.cpp:

ESP8266:

INFO ESPHome 2025.6.2
INFO Reading configuration /config/esphome/test-esp8266.yaml...
INFO Generating C++ source...
INFO Compiling app...
Processing test-esp8266 (board: esp01_1m; framework: arduino; platform: platformio/[email protected])
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
HARDWARE: ESP8266 80MHz, 80KB RAM, 1MB Flash
Dependency Graph
|-- ESPAsyncTCP-esphome @ 2.0.0
|-- ESPAsyncWebServer-esphome @ 3.3.0
|-- DNSServer @ 1.1.1
|-- ESP8266WiFi @ 1.0
|-- ESP8266mDNS @ 1.2
|-- noise-c @ 0.1.6
Compiling .pioenvs/test-esp8266/src/esphome/components/api/api_connection.cpp.o
xtensa-lx106-elf-g++: fatal error: Killed signal terminated program cc1plus
compilation terminated.
========================= [FAILED] Took 49.97 seconds =========================

Pico W:

INFO ESPHome 2025.6.2
INFO Reading configuration /config/esphome/test-pico.yaml...
INFO Generating C++ source...
INFO Compiling app...
Processing test-pico (board: rpipicow; framework: arduino; platform: https://github.com/maxgerhardt/platform-raspberrypi.git#v1.2.0-gcc12)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
HARDWARE: RP2040 133MHz, 256KB RAM, 2MB Flash
 - framework-arduinopico @ 1.30904.0 (3.9.4) 
 - tool-picotool-rp2040-earlephilhower @ 5.120300.240818 (12.3.0) 
Flash size: 2.00MB
Sketch size: 1.00MB
Filesystem size: 1.00MB
Maximium Sketch size: 1044480 EEPROM start: 0x101ff000 Filesystem start: 0x100ff000 Filesystem end: 0x101ff000
========================= [FAILED] Took 16.73 seconds =========================

As you can see it doesn’t give me any proper error messages either, so i have no idea why this is happening. Any ideas?

2

Not enough memory anymore. The Pi 3 only has 1 Gb memory, barely enough for recent HA versions. If you add compiling EspHome on that…

1 Like
3

You can compile on another computer using the command line.

Or try the new windows stand alone gui installer.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Esphome/comments/1lig8zy/release_esphomeguieasy_v130_standalone_windows/

4

In the past it was often possible to mitigate this shortcomings by limiting the amount of cores used when compiling. :snail:

Sadly @flohag didn’t include any esphome yaml so we can’t know if compile_process_limit was tweaked :person_shrugging:

5

Thanks for all the replies. I guess you are right that it’s a memory issue (and the compiler getting killed by the OOM-killer). I checked and even in idle it’s using almost 80% of memory. Guess i have to upgrade the Pi…
For now i’m gonna try the suggestion with compiling on another machine though.
Thanks!

6

Did you try at all configure esphome to utilize less memory when compiling? :thinking:

In another note: Searching your particular problem in this forum leads to plenty of results (including Solutions) :checkered_flag:

7

Back when i used a Pi3 i had the same problems. Its a resource crunch causing it and in order to flash boards with Esphome you need to first stop unnecessary integrations and/or add-ons like if you have NodeRed running, you need to stop that and stop any other ones that wont cause issues.

Once your flash is finished then go restart those those integrations and add-ons.

Its a huge pain and honestly i would just upgrade to a Pi4b or Pi5

8

It’s really easy to compile on another machine. Even with a pi 4 and 8mb of ram, voice pe takes over a half hour to compile. It takes 4 minutes on my desktop.