ESP Home - Please help

edgehassio · March 16, 2025, 10:01am

Hi all,

I’m at a dead end and need some help troubleshooting major issues with ESP-based devices in my Home Assistant setup.

I’m trying to set up two devices:

Home Assistant Voice Assistant
ESPHome Bed-Presence Sensor

1) Home Assistant Voice Assistant – Stuck in Setup & No Response

• The device is discovered and appears under ESPHome integration.
• I can see its sensors and control LEDs, but voice functions don’t work.
• When I go to Setup Assistant and configure the wake word (e.g., “Hey Jarvis”) twice, I get a blank screen with only “Skip” in the top right corner.
• It doesn’t proceed to the next steps, as shown in this setup guide at 00:37:15.
• In the next test screen, the device does not respond to any commands and has never produced audio output .

What I’ve Tried So Far:

Verified ESPHome integration – device is detected.
Tested on both HTTP (homeassistant.local:8123) and HTTPS (Nabu Casa) .
Checked Home Assistant logs – no relevant errors.
Tried different browsers (Safari & Opera) with the same issue.
Confirmed mDNS is enabled (no VLANs in my network).

Does anyone know how to resolve this issue?

2) ESPHome Bed-Presence Sensor – Can’t Connect to ESPHome

• The device is visible on my network (I can see it via IP scanning).
• However, I can’t add it to ESPHome in Home Assistant.
• I get this error:

Can't connect to ESP. Please make sure your YAML file contains an 'api:'

•The developer’s guide suggests using Settings → Devices & Services → ESPHome → Add Device and entering the IP + port, but this fails as well.
•To eliminate network issues, I’ve manually allowed traffic on port 6053 between HA and the device.

What I’ve Tried So Far:

Verified mDNS is enabled.
Confirmed no VLANs or network isolation.
Allowed traffic on port 6053 (ESPHome API).
Attempted to add via IP manually in ESPHome.
Restarted both Home Assistant and the ESP device.

I suspect something fundamental is wrong with my ESPHome setup rather than these being isolated issues.

Any ideas on what could be causing these problems? Let me know if additional logs or details would help. Thanks in advance!

Arh · March 16, 2025, 10:57am

For number 2 you need to specify an API like it says in the error.

Post your yaml, and where you got the setup instructions from. We may be able to help more then.

edgehassio · March 16, 2025, 12:39pm

Hey Arh, thanks for the support.

So I don’t get the “config” file. After messing around, trying to figure what could be the problem, I also installed the ESPHome Builder, and I see I now have an ESP home directory in the config dir. This is where I believe any so called config files should be. As far as I have understood, the config file is device specific. Nowhere in the docs the this sensor does it mention anything about this.

Arh · March 16, 2025, 1:19pm

So this is not a home made device? If so you really need to be contacting the supplier. I am not sure what yaml file on his github is being used, but the supplier should be able to help, after all you won’t be the first to have this problem.

edgehassio · March 16, 2025, 1:45pm

Cheers. Yea, I’ve contact the dev on that. But in parallel I’m also investigating the possibility of the issue being on my side, since I haven’t been successful deploying a single ESP home device yet.

Arh · March 16, 2025, 2:05pm

Ok lets see if we can help then.

What other devices are you trying to configure?

Your HA is on the same network as the devices you are trying to setup?

Have you followed this? Getting Started with ESPHome and Home Assistant — ESPHome

Once esphome device builder is installed it’s just a matter of plugging in an esp32 and clicking add device. Then following the instructions. This step will not work for premade devices like the 2 listed in the original post.

edgehassio · March 16, 2025, 2:28pm

Home Assistant Voice Preview Addition and this pressure sensor.

The HA voice appears to be partly adopted into the the ESPHome platform as an entity, but as described in the original post, nothing happens. Like zero.

All devices are on the same network. No VLANs either.

thanks again for the support!

Arh · March 16, 2025, 2:40pm

Are so both of these have esphome setup preinstalled on them, I won’t be able to help much as I have no experience of either product.

For the voice you might want to read this Home Assistant not discovering Voice PE

The other one you are going to have to wait till the supplier replies unless someone else here has an answer.

orange-assistant · March 16, 2025, 2:41pm

Thing is you don’t adopt entities. Two different pairs of shoes

In the esphome device builder/compiler/dashboard you can adopt discovered (and supported) espHome nodes for logging/updates and changes.

On the other hand the internal espHome integration (part of HA core) does allow connecting esphome nodes to HA which will make their entities available in HA

The link posted earlier for you should get on track

stevemann · March 16, 2025, 2:47pm

Slightly off-topic, but…
I strongly recommend that you buy an ESP32 development board and any Sensor Kit and play with it. Google 'sensor name’ on esphome and learn to write configurations. Make things work. Learn. When your configuration doesn’t work, post the YAML file here and lots of people will jump in to help.

Home Assistant started as a DIY project. It is not and probably never will be an off-the-shelf plug and play appliance.

edgehassio · March 16, 2025, 2:50pm

Hey, cheers.

I don’t think the link helps in this case. According to both devs, there’s not even a mention of this ESPHome Builder being required.

Here’s the voice in ESPHome:

Clicking on “set up voice assistant” (left hand side) is where I get the bank screen.

For the other device, the bed presence sensor, simply doesn’t appear in the ESP home dashboard…when according to dev, it should.

All of this without ESP Home Builder

edgehassio · March 16, 2025, 2:53pm

Hi, cheers. Good advice.

Agreed about plug and ~~play~~ pray, but honestly my experience with HA up-to-now has been more or less that. I’ve been developing on this platform for years, but only this week stating with my first ESP-Home devices. One HA Branded, and the other with some fairly good reviews.

Arh · March 16, 2025, 2:53pm

You don’t need esphome builder, that is just for making your own yaml configs, or modifying what you have. Your voice is working fine according to that screen grab. Have you tried talking to it? Okay nabu, turn on a light.

orange-assistant · March 16, 2025, 2:54pm

Plenty of entites exposed

It isn’t for ready made devices like yours - BUT it can greatly help with your debugging capabilities (logs)

EspHome dashboard was the former name of the EspHome device builder - it is the same thing

edgehassio · March 16, 2025, 2:57pm

That’s what I thought. And yes, of course I have hehe. As mentioned in the original post, I haven’t had a single response from the device. After I “skip” the blank screen I get to this screen:

Hitting *try" flashes the LED ring on the voice and that’s it. Nothing more. I don’t get any reply, no error, nothing in the logs. Just nothing.

orange-assistant · March 16, 2025, 2:58pm

How do you get the logs of the esphome device?

Maybe just install the esphome device builder, adopt your device and hit “logs”, then you will see in real time what’s happening

edgehassio · March 16, 2025, 3:11pm

Let me try that then. Let’s see…

edgehassio · March 16, 2025, 3:15pm

So I took control. Got a pop saying additional config needed to be downloaded to the device which ultimately failed:

Compiling .pioenvs/home-assistant-voice-096ce6/src/esphome/components/aic3204/aic3204.cpp.o
Compiling .pioenvs/home-assistant-voice-096ce6/src/esphome/components/api/api_connection.cpp.o
Compiling .pioenvs/home-assistant-voice-096ce6/src/esphome/components/api/api_frame_helper.cpp.o
Compiling .pioenvs/home-assistant-voice-096ce6/src/esphome/components/api/api_pb2.cpp.o
Compiling .pioenvs/home-assistant-voice-096ce6/src/esphome/components/api/api_pb2_service.cpp.o
Compiling .pioenvs/home-assistant-voice-096ce6/src/esphome/components/api/api_server.cpp.o
In file included from src/esphome/components/micro_wake_word/micro_wake_word.h:6,
                 from src/esphome/components/voice_assistant/voice_assistant.h:16,
                 from src/esphome/components/api/api_connection.cpp:22:
src/esphome/components/micro_wake_word/streaming_model.h:9:10: fatal error: tensorflow/lite/core/c/common.h: No such file or directory
    9 | #include <tensorflow/lite/core/c/common.h>
      |          ^~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
compilation terminated.
*** [.pioenvs/home-assistant-voice-096ce6/src/esphome/components/api/api_connection.cpp.o] Error 1
========================= [FAILED] Took 263.49 seconds =========================

If I crash out of that and just hit the logs I also see this:

WARNING home-assistant-voice-096ce6 @ 92.xxx.xxx.xxx: Connection error occurred: home-assistant-voice-096ce6 @ 192.xxx.xxx.xxx: The connection dropped immediately after encrypted hello; Try enabling encryption on the device or turning off encryption on the client (ESPHome Logs 2025.2.2).
WARNING Can't connect to ESPHome API for home-assistant-voice-096ce6 @ 192.xxx.xxx.xxx: home-assistant-voice-096ce6 @ 92.xxx.xxx.xxx: The connection dropped immediately after encrypted hello; Try enabling encryption on the device or turning off encryption on the client (ESPHome Logs 2025.2.2). (HandshakeAPIError)
INFO Trying to connect to home-assistant-voice-096ce6 @ 92.xxx.xxx.xxxin the background
INFO Successfully connected to home-assistant-voice-096ce6 @ 92.xxx.xxx.xxxin 0.005s
WARNING home-assistant-voice-096ce6 @ 92.xxx.xxx.xxx: Connection error occurred: home-assistant-voice-096ce6 @ 192.xxx.xxx.xxx: The connection dropped immediately after encrypted hello; Try enabling encryption on the device or turning off encryption on the client (ESPHome Logs 2025.2.2).

orange-assistant · March 16, 2025, 3:27pm

But you are compiling/updating/installing - for directly opening the logs that shouldn’t happen at all

That somewhat worked… If you have the logger open you can try again (in parallel) the workflow for the voice assistant in HA to see what happens on the device side

For the compiler to fail - what device(specs) does your HA server has? Maybe it runs out of resources and kills the compile process

edgehassio · March 16, 2025, 3:41pm

Tried the process again whilst monitoring the logs.

But nothing more in the logs than I’ve already shared.

You could be onto something with the resources. I hit a peak of almost 100% on the processor, memory looks ok. I’m using Home Assistant Blue with HA OS installed. I’m now sitting very high at 87% (not normal and up since I started messing around with this ESP home)

side note: Somehow I managed have everything installed as “root” and not user homeassistant. I have my suspicions that this is somehow relevant.

But you are compiling/updating/installing - for directly opening the logs that shouldn’t happen at all

idk? I just followed the prompts.

FYI: I’m done for today. Lost a lot of time on this. Thank a lot for your efforts! Much appreciated.