Background: Recently I setup HA in a docker on a Synology NAS. Everything is working fine and I primarily I have been tinkering with custom sensors using raspberry pi pico Ws and MQTT (also in a docker on my NAS). I have seen a lot about ESPHome and the prospect of using that and being able to manage OTA seemed beneficial, so I set to testing it out, and basically, I can’t even get past the starting gate.
Issue(s): I installed ESPHome in a docker on my NAS and it seems to be running OK and I can access the dashboard. However when I go to add a device via the dashboard page on my Windows PC, I get the New device dialog stating I’m not using HTTPS and therefore I’m prevented from using connected device (rpipicow). Ok seems to make sense since the device is connected to a different computer than the docker is on, so I select the “OPEN ESPHOME WEB” follow the instructions, download the uf2 file, drag it to the rpipicow, then it finds the device and I set the wifi info and it shows up on my wifi network.
That’s as far as I can get with the device, I cannot see it and therefore adopt it into ESPHome using the dashboard. Yesterday, when I was trying various things it did show up once for adoption but ultimately it failed with some error that I didn’t document and I have never gotten to that point after uninstalling/reinstalling ESPHome docker, reflashing the picow etc. Interestingly I can add the device into HA using ESPHome, but at this point it’s not so useful since I haven’t been able to configure it as I want.
I’m not sure where to go from here to troubleshoot. In the end I just want a way to program the device/node and flash it. If there is some better way than using the ESPHome dashboard, I’m all for it. That being said one of the other issues is that if I create a device in the dashboard, select install and then “Manual download”, it hangs and the step “3 Download project preparing download…” the blue circle spins indefinitely.
