How to Know What Changed in This Version of ESPHome?

ESPHome
1

These most recent updates reminded me to ask the question in the title.

Reading the update notification, I see:

2023.2.2

Great. Do I need to address this now, or can it wait?

So I click the link…

What does this implement/fix?

Types of changes

Bugfix (non-breaking change which fixes an issue)

OK. It’s a bug. I’m glad it’s fixed. Does it affect me? I don’t have a pico-w, and I’m not sure what adopting a variant means.

I assume there’s a link somewhere which explains what this particular bug was, and how to figure out whether or not I should all my ESP devices. I just can’t seem to find it.

2

No it does not affect you if you don’t have one.

3

There are two links in your text.
The last one is the username of the developer.
The first one is the link to the actual code.
If you click on the first one then you will see info on the code and if it is a fix then you might see a link to a big report also.

In reality this is not really important.
A bug fix will correct a problem and the chance you should somehow exploit that bug in your own setup is zero.
A new feature will not be something you are using yet, so no worry there either.
Then there is a change. A normal change should not affect your current configuration. Only if it is marked as breaking change should you take a look, but a breaking change will always be mentioned in the lead text.

4

Thank you, @tom_l and @WallyR. Glad to know this doesn’t affect me. I’ve selected this update to “skip” so I won’t get the notification any more.

I guess I was hoping there would be some way for me, a mere user, to figure that out for myself without wasting everyone’s time with questions like this.

5

Just ask!
The forum is for exchanging all knowledge related to HA and the usage of it.
What might be obvious for us might be hard to figure out for you and the next day it is reverse.

1 Like
6

Also generally if you don’t use the device or component you won’t be affected.

I skip lots of ESPHome updates. I have 43 devices. It’s a pain to update them all every month. And flash memory has limited write endurance (less of a concern, you’d have to update a lot for that to be an issue).

I basically only update when there are new features I want of for Home Assistant compatibility.

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7

I hadn’t thought of the endurance of the flash memory in these things. I’ve been known to re-compile and re-load them repetitively as I’m learning about, testing and refining my devices.

8

It’s not much of a worry. It’s an external chip so it depends on your board, but the Espressif spec’d chips are 100,000 write cycles minimum (at 25°C, but these device run hotter than than that).

If you have restore from flash enabled and it writes every minute that’s only about 70 days if it writes over the same memory cell. It does not. It has wear levelling.

I’ve had plenty of esphome flashed smart plugs die after a year. Not sure if that was due to flash memory endurance or just crappy design.

10

Every month? Try every few days.

11

A LOT off topic. Open a separate thread.

12

The major version release cycle is monthly. Just update at the end of the month, before the next major version is released. That way you get all the minor updates from the current release at once.

1 Like
13

I almost never update my ESPHome devices.

I had been on a late 2021 version of ESPHome on most of my devices until last week when I finally decided to update them to 2022.9 before I updated ESPHome itself to 2022.12. The only reason I did then was to play around with the updated BLE proxy.

I’ll see that “update available” for all of my devices in the ESPHome dashboard again until I finally get around to updating from 2022.9 to 2022.12 eventually too.

I just don’t see a reason to update ESPHome stuff until I absolutely have to.