The automation editor is one of the aspects that have had more changes and ease of use for the user in the last year. Now it is much more powerful.
With the new acquisition of ESPhome things can get interesting. Setting up an ESPhome device is relatively straightforward, but creating server-independent automation logic can be a headache in complex situations.
Using the native Home Assistant automation editor to be able to serve as an IDE for ESPhome does not seem impossible to me and I think it would be tremendously interesting to evaluate it. At least in logics that depends directly on the onboard sensors and time events.
I put as an example: my humidity sensor in my bathroom, a Sonoff Th that has a motion sensor attached to the board, it takes 3 seconds to detect movement, send it to the server and the light turns on in the bathroom, I’m sure it can be minimized the time if the logic worked locally and reported to Home Assistant backstage somehow.
It’s an idea, vote for it if you think decentralization is the way to many solutions.
That gives you the possibility to run things on your device (like the Sonoff) and react directly.
Are you asking for a “clickable UI” for ESPHome? Or is it just the same as in your example? An UI would be interesting, but to be honest, if one can’t run and work with the yaml files in ESPHome, I’m not sure if one should use a self programmed microcontroller… I’d see the actual implementation with yaml as kind of a border for not enough experienced users. Don’t make it to easy.
i got it and i personally already made a bunch of ESPhome automation on-boad with all the pain and miracles of the lambdas and everything but, some things in ESPhome you have to do it in the “old school” paths like the select, if else (not the normal, the nested), etc.
The HA automation UI is so clean right now and capable to work as IDE for ESPhome and made a 30min coding a 3 minutes work.
I know pain is knowledge but…you can use the elevator and the stairs too…
In the future the iot devices will come with the option to the user to upload custom firmware without messing up with open the sharply plastic case (sheeeelly…)
Still not sure what you are proposing. In my case it would be the exact opposite. I’d need to readup what function does what. If I understand the function, I can write the yaml code. So in my case it would be 30 minutes clicking against three minute writing. But that’s me, so I’m probably not the audience for this request.
I highly doubt that, I’m pretty sure that there will be devices, that will allow for modification of any kind, but it won’t be the “standard”. This is a field where people want to modify their devices. But that’s not the majority. The plug-and-play solutions will still be closed source, because that’s the way you can make (more) money out of it. But I’d love to be surprised.
While Nabu Casa has acquired the ESPHome project, they have a seperate developer team and github repository. So ESPHome feature requests should still be made here, not in the Home Assistant forum.
Shelly and Lifx both offer local options without the need for flashing alternate firmware, which is one of the reasons I support them, but they are the exception as far as wifi devices go.
The esphome API connection to ha is lightning fast.
I have a pir sensor with an led on it. The led lights as soon as it detects motion.
This pir is connected to an esp, when it detects motion the esp tells home assistant (WiFi), home assistant tells appdaemon, appdaemon tells home assistant what to do, home assistant tells deconz what to do, deconz sends the command through the mesh to the target lights.
All this happens in less time that it takes to blink, I know this because the red led on the pir lights up a few milliseconds before the lights come on in the room.
That aside, whatever you want to do in esphome with automations is already so easy.
It’s usually a case of on_press do this.
(sheeeelly…)