Does anyone know of a heartbeat capability in ESPhome?
I am familiar with the binary_sensor of the “status” platform
binary_sensor:
- platform: status
name: "${hostname}_status"
But I’d like to get an indicator that shows if my code (the loop) that runs on the board is functioning…something like an input boolean that is turned on and off every x-seconds.
I got close by (ab-)using a GPIO port of the board, but I was wondering if this could be done without having to sacrifice a GPIO port for it.
This is what I have:
Depends on what is outside of your loop and what you want to happen when it breaks.
If you have the esphome connected to a ha instance you could send regular events by API or mqtt and check them there.
that is exactly what I would like to do…
Do you happen to have any example code? I tried with importing an “input boolean” from HA, but I got stuck
chrisV
When connected via api, you can create events for the homeassistant event bus with this code on the esphome-device. Ideally, this would include some actual health-checks.
Next, these events can be received by an automation in homeassistant and update a date/time helper (called myImportantEsphomeDevice.lastHealthChec) with the current timestamp.
It takes the update_interval argument, which serves as a heartbeat, and gives you the uptime as well, which is useful in this sort of situation in case there was a reboot.
Does the uptime sensor “shows if my code (the loop) that runs on the board is functioning” sufficiently?
Thanks for the tip about the debug component! It would be very helpful to know why the device reset, for example.
I’m getting a strange error when adding the component:
Compiling /data/s3-dev-kit-3/.pioenvs/s3-dev-kit-3/src/esphome/components/debug/debug_component.cpp.o
In file included from /data/cache/platformio/packages/framework-arduinoespressif32/tools/sdk/esp32s3/include/esp_rom/include/esp32/rom/rtc.h:18,
from src/esphome/components/debug/debug_component.cpp:15:
/data/cache/platformio/packages/framework-arduinoespressif32/tools/sdk/esp32s3/include/esp_rom/include/esp32/rom/ets_sys.h:29:2: error: #error "This header should only be included when building for ESP32"
#error "This header should only be included when building for ESP32"
^~~~~
Could it be this component doesn’t support ESP32S3?
Or is it a bug?
a specific MQTT topic, with the free heap as payload
Relevant parts of the config looks like below. Adapt settings as needed to your local config.
Settings below have been obfuscated a bit.
sensor:
- platform: template
name: "Free heap"
lambda: |-
int freeHeap = ESP.getFreeHeap();
return freeHeap / 1024.0;
unit_of_measurement: "kB"
icon: mdi:memory
entity_category: "diagnostic"
id: free_heap
mqtt:
topic_prefix: sometopic/sensor/my-fine-device/data
discovery: false
broker: <ip of MQTT broker>
port: <port of MQTT broker>
birth_message:
topic: sometopic/sensor/my-fine-device/status
payload: online
will_message:
topic: sometopic/sensor/my-fine-device/status
payload: offline
http_request:
useragent: esphome/my-fine-device
timeout: 10s
interval:
# Send heartbeat
- interval: 1min
then:
# Publish free heap as heartbeat to MQTT
- mqtt.publish:
topic: sometopic/sensor/my-fine-device/heartbeat
payload: !lambda |-
char buf[25];
sprintf(buf, "%1.3f", id(free_heap).state);
return ((std::string) buf).c_str();
# Send heartbeat to healthchecks
- http_request.get: http://<IP where healthchecks is running>:<port>/ping/23a8a195-c706-4b06-92ec-7695a730f18d
# Send heartbeat to Kuma
- http_request.get: http://<IP where Kuma is running>:<port>/api/push/fKoBnnpWQ0?status=up&msg=OK&ping=
You also have to create the appropriate tests in Healthchecks and Kuma, and adapt the URLs above wrt to the URLs generated by the two monitoring tools.
Works really well, looks like both ESP8266 and ESP32 handles this nicely also over time.
The Kuma status page gives good overview.
Kuma and Healthchecks.io both integrate with tons of different alerting channels, so it’s possible to forward device-is-down messages as needed.
