ESPHOME OTA requires platform

[rontaylor]

I have not been updating my few devices with new ESPHOME updates and just recently tried and got this error can anyone advise me on how to fix it please.
INFO ESPHome 2024.6.6
INFO Reading configuration /config/esphome/mobile_temperature.yaml…
Failed config

ota.unknown: [source /config/esphome/mobile_temperature.yaml:27]

‘ota’ requires a ‘platform’ key but it was not specified.
password: xxxxxxxxx

Thank you

[FloatingBoater (James Derrick)]

Hi,
Can I suggest a search, or the release notes?

Over-the-Air Updates

This minor breaking change was flagged by the ESPhome team several times.

[zenzay42]

Heads up for Esphome 2024.6

In esphome 2024.6 the ota configuration has changed, and it you have ota: in your yaml file it won’t compile without fixing. The old invocation was ota: password: secretstuff You now need to add platform, so it will look like this: ota: - password: secretstuff platform: esphome this will get you there. There is now also a platform: http_request as well, hence the need for a change. This is dealt with in the changelog ESPHome 2024.6.0 - 19th June 2024 — ESPHome , but I just wanted …

[rontaylor]

Thank you very much for that.
I only have 3 ESPHome projects and have never written the code (somebody else did and I used it) so my understanding of the code is rudimentary.
I am 72 years old and the younger people can retain all these breaking changes easily. I used to be able to do this in my younger years too as I did things frequently. Practice makes permanent.
Home Assistant is supposed to be making things easier but sometimes I wonder.
Anyway that you again

[FloatingBoater (James Derrick)]

Hi Ron,
Hope you get things sorted, but for the future there’s a few simple things anyone can do to make running HASS much easier:

• Search, search, search - almost every issue you can have has already been disused on this forum. Even brand new releases have been in Beta release for a week, so have discussion somewhere.
• Read the HASS release notes, and blog entries. Stuff that breaks things are rare, but don’t typically appear without some comment in the release notes. It’s also a great way to find out about new features, and how to use them.
• Watch the monthly release parties on YouTube. These are basically the developers talking about what they have been doing, and more importantly WHY. You might only understand 10% of the two hour video stream, but that one live demonstration could save you many hours of head scratching. It’s like the release notes explained.
• If all things fail, do what all technologists do - read XKCD cartoons:
  xkcd: Tech Support Cheat Sheet

I’m retired, watch technology develop in ways that seem alien, and shout at clouds, but the trick is to use your time to keep learning. Open Source Software is wonderful and FREE, but the cost is usually the time to read, and support yourself.

It really isn’t about age - my early library books were on thermionic valves and electromechanical relays (GPO Type 4).

If this helps, this post!

[Protoncek (Pavel)]

I apologize, but this is slowly becoming pretty annoying… don’t get me wrong: my intention isn’t to be " a jerk" in any way, and it’s not intended to this topic only, since it happens elsewhere, too; but i really wish that people would use SEARCH engine before double, triple, quadruple… posting same question over and over again… that’s why there’s loupe icon on top right corner of this page just entering “esphome ota” gives over 5 topics with answers…

And, by the way: when you type in a question: on the right side (when normally preview is shown) a suggestion will appear with similar topics if found. I strongly suggest clicking on it, not just click on “esc” or ignoring it.

Using search won’t just keep this forum cleaner but above all you’ll get immediate answer, while here you have to wait for someone to post a reply (again).

Gazillion times pointed out already: READ CHANGELOG !!!before!!! each update - and this means for all updates (HA, addons, esphome…). That’s why changelogs are there for. You can mess up things pretty quickly by NOT reading changelog, trust me, been there, done that… Just blindly clicking on “update” each time it appears inevitably leads to disaster sooner or later (but rather sooner).

[rontaylor]

Hello James,
Thank you for the reply.
My background was thermionic valves & relays as I was in the communications industry.
I did search. First I copied the diagnostic and and googled it. Not all that fruitful so then I did a search on the forum. There were some things that were close but not as succinct as the answer Zenzay42.
As with all search engines the seeding is important. In my experience seeding is import and. Wrong seeds leads to wrong or irrelevant answers.
I do try and read the breaking changes with core updates but I must admit that I never did this with updates on ESPHome. I have learned something here.
I apologise if I annoyed those who knew the question had been asked a few times before.

[Ellcon]

I agree with the search comment but it’s not a unique problem with this forum. Doing a search on the diagnostic is a valid 1st pass but it would generally be a very specific string so I would not expect much. I always search small and then modify based on results. When there are to many results just add another key word to narrow down the results. Searching this forum on “ota platform” works straight up.

[beausmith (Beau)]

Better than all this Search! and RTFM! advice… if the ESPHome errors can be so specific, why can’t someone implement a feature to provide a “Fix this issue for me” button to automatically update the code and reinstall?

[FloatingBoater (James Derrick)]

The answer is in the YouTube release video, straight from the developer’s mouth.

They wanted to add an auto-patch, but it couldn’t work.