Distributed ESPHome compile and upload

ESPHome
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PSA: Distributed ESPHome Compilation Is Here and It’s Amazing

40 ESPHome devices. Used to take hours to compile and update all of them. Didn’t matter how much CPU or RAM I threw at HA, it just ground through them one at a time.

This project lets you offload compilation to a remote Docker container on a beefier machine. It’s an HA add-on (build server + job queue + web UI) paired with lightweight build workers that pull configs, compile, and push firmware via OTA.

I set up a Debian LXC on my Proxmox box, gave it 10 cores and 10GB RAM, and ran 8 parallel compile jobs. All 40 devices — compiled and OTA updated — in about 14 minutes. I am not exaggerating.

Setup took maybe 15 minutes. Install the HA add-on, spin up a Docker container on your build machine with the server URL and token, done. The web UI shows device status, build queue, logs, and connected workers.

If you have more than a dozen ESPHome devices and any kind of second machine available, do yourself a favor and try this. Huge thanks to @weirded for building it.

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This sounds great! Will take a look at this. I have currently migrated ESPhome to a separate docker and have another docker image to do automated scheduled updates…

But your solution sound way better to me… will have a look! :slightly_smiling_face:

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Just to be clear, I had nothing to do with this except finding it through a Reddit Thread, but Oh man, is it nice and keeps getting better and better.

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Still awesome. This should be merged into Esphome Main asap if you ask me.

This is long awaited functionality that definitely is a next step for the project

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:100: agreed, this needs to be the new esphome builder.

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Dang. Trying this on a Synology NAS ( esphome-distributed container host ) and a remote PC ( worker )

The esphome-distributed container starts fine on the NAS ( that’s where my ESPHome instance lives ) and if I navigate to the dashboard, everything is there as expected.

I start up a worker on the remote PC, it connects back to the esphome-distributed container just fine. All green lights.

I try to run an upgrade job and boom, the esphome-distributed container goes offline ( according to the worker logs ). If I try use the dashboard - sure as Bob, it’s non-responsive. If I look at the Synology Container Manager, the container is “up”, but running at 100% of its CPU and there’s nothing in the logs :s:

If I try restart the esphome-distributed container, it comes up for 2 seconds then insta-dies !

Any ideas ? First knee-jerk suspicion is some security or ownership issue Synology side