Home Assistant Voice Assistant Preview Edition

Hardware
1

I have just updated ESPHome (2026.2.2), Home Assistant (Core 2026.2.3 and Supervisor 2026.02.3 and Operating System 17.1 and Frontend 20260128.6), and Voice Assistant Preview Edition (2026.2.2).

However, Home Assistant asks “Add Device” in Discover. V.A.P.E. appears to connect to WiFi (I think I can see it’s i.p. address). But V.A.P.E. spins blue and nothing happens?

It does not show up anywhere anymore, not in HA or ESPHome. I havr tried flashing it with the latest software, but still nothing except a blue spinning ring?

Any help would be most appreciated.

2

Hi,
The general advice for Nabu Casa hardware is if a firmware update fails in HA, use a PC and their web-flasher to rewrite the firmware.

I’ve had to recover a ZBT-2, and VA-PE: via this method (note the second bootloader mode process):

ISTR the fixed VA-PE appeared as a new device (although the MAC address should be the same).

If that’s what you’ve already done (including also trying bootloader mode) and it didn’t work, I’d contact NC support.

If this helps, :heart: this post!