Confused about ESPHome API, Triggers, and HA Services

ESPHome
1

Below is my ESPHome Config for an LED strip that lights my stairs. It works great for the PIR sensor attached to it, but I would also like to use HA triggers to create more lighting effects like addressable rainbow or other things mentioned in the docs.

What I am confused most about is the yaml for accessing api > on_press > for a service. I’m not sure if that makes sense. What I ideally want to happen is for when motion is detected on camera A (sensor.camera_a), for this light, (light.led_stairs) to show addressable rainbow or some other effect.

I currently have the light turn on a different color using scenes & automation. A scene for the LED light color and then automation for when the motion is detected. However, I can’t do any fun effects via automation/scenes. If I can, please correct me. If not, it looks like I can do that via the ESPHome yaml. Can anyone offer any help?

binary_sensor:
  - platform: gpio
    pin: 
      number: GPIO16
      mode: INPUT_PULLDOWN_16
    name: "Stair_motion"
    id: stair_motion
    device_class: motion
    on_press:
      - if:
          condition:
            binary_sensor.is_on: stair_motion
          then:
            - light.turn_on: led_stairs_light
            - delay: 7s
            - light.turn_off: led_stairs_light
          else:
            - wait_until:
                binary_sensor.is_on: stair_motion
    
light:
  - platform: neopixelbus
    type: GRB
    pin: GPIO3
    num_leds: 60
    name: "led_stairs_strip"
    id: led_stairs_light
    variant: WS2812
2

Try

    on_press:
      then:
        - light.turn_on: led_stairs_light
    on_release:
      then:
        - delay: 7s
        - light.turn_off: led_stairs_light

In home assistant you have to add the esphome sketch from the integrations page. Then you will have an entity light.led_stairs_strip and you can turn them on and off from there too.

3

Thanks for your reply to both of my treads, Mike! I think I may have explained this incorrectly, here’s a pseudo-yaml of what I’m looking to do.

api:
  password: 1234

# HA Sensor Trigger
on_press:
  - homeassistant.service:
       service: motion.backyard
       then:
         - light:
               platform: wled
               effect: addressable_rainbow # Or scan, or any other effect

Under the API header do I need to import the sensors from HA that I want to use? As in, create a binary sensor for each camera motion sensor I want to use?

I’m using Frigate, so MQTT would also be a possible use case. So to trigger this ESPHome sensor within the ESPHome yaml, I believe I just need to trigger an automation from “on_json_message”, such as this example.

In retrospect, MQTT seems like the easier option, but I am now curious how to solve the original question of importing a sensor in my HA config into my ESPHome yaml.

mqtt:
  # ...
  on_json_message:
    topic: the/topic
    then:
      - light.turn_on:
          id: living_room_lights
4

You import sensors, just like adding any other kind of sensor, but using the platform homeassistant.

5

Holy crap, how did I miss that page in the docs?! Thanks, Andrew. There are so many ESPHome pages I sometimes get lost… :grimacing:

2 Likes
6

Most of the time that I visit the site, I don’t see the list of all the different sensors etc, because it’s giving me a changelog since the last time I visited.

1 Like