Hi there. I have a general question that I hope may be answered while I wait for hardware to arrive to test myself.
I am using HA in a camper build, and plan on having a wired (eth) esp32 in each ‘zone’, with sensors/switches/led strips attached/controlled/etc by each esp within each zone.
Power usage is important. My plan is to have the HA instance control switching each zone on/off, powering the entire esp/sensors/etc down in all but the active zones.
Is powering up/down esphome devices going to make HA freak out, or will it plod along and just reconnect once devices are powered back up? Any insight would be appreciated.
Its really unnecessary to use multiple esp boards and set up zones with them in something small like a camper and especially if power requirements are a limiting factor due to it having a battery.
You can run dozens of sensors/devices/lights etc from a single esp board and its very common.
You can also configure groups of entities from that single esp board and set them up as software zones instead of physical zones.
It would be identical to what your wanting to do, its just a different way and IMO more efficient and you wouldnt have the hassle of needing to turn on individual esp boards and wait for it to boot up just to turn on the kitchen lights for example.
One device can control it all, no need for unnecessary steps, no need for overcomplicated setup, zones still possible, less power requirements and more reliable.
Personally, I would even recommend you looking into mounting a touchscreen display somewhere convenient and then have a physical button as part of the display or mounted beside the display and tbat could be your easy way to power on or power off.
You could even set up the button for multuple finctions like for example if your leaving the camper for several hours then you could set it up so a long press(press and hold) could power down the esp and any devices it controls. If for example you only expect to be gone for 30min, you could do a double press and put into a reduced power sleep mode rather than a full power down…
Or do what you want lol. You have lots of options is all i was trying to say.
I have thought about a single esp, possibly with gpio expanders if needed, but here are the main reason is I can save a shit ton of unnecessary wiring. Each esp will be nearer to the sensors/switches/etc in the zone.
I also like that if an esp fails I can just reload backed up configs to a new module, WITHOUT all other zones staying down. Also, I plan on ensuring direct button input in esphome to activate lights/etc on each so they can act independently of ha.
Yes, so that’s why I’m doing multiple zones. Each setup is a duplicate and I have an extra for redundancy. 3d printed ‘hatch’ enclosures mounted in the walls in each area with sensors (in separated, vented compartments) as well as io as needed for localised switching/lighting control.
FYI, since my initial question I have changed my approach for the io to control powering each zone. This is because I’m moving from gpio on a pi to an x86 board (Odroid H4 Ultra), so will probably use something like an adafruit mcp2221a as there seems to be a plugin for this via HACS already.
With a max 15w 8 core x86 machine I’m going to virtualise so as to do firewall/media/NVR/nas/self hosting/etc on as lower power scale as I can.
Again, it all comes back to power saving which is why I wanted to know if powering up/down esphome devices adversely affects Home Assistant…
So… You didnt think my solution was good enough huh?? How am i supposed to live with that kind of rejection!!!
Oh… Im JK.
It would actually be less wiring technically and physically wired is much more dependable than wireless and switches/light pairs could be wired to work with Esphome and physically with the button and will still work if Esphome is offline but i can take rejection and move on but, i get what your trying to do either way.
