How to post values from ESPhome to https sites without fingerprint

ESPHome
1

This advice may help those who want to send sensor values from esphome directly to IoT https server. For example, Home assistant only allows to send one value to thingspeak.com, but from esphome sensor you can send as many fields in one https request as you want.

The problem is that using https usually requires that you define fingeprint of the site and if the fingerprint changes, you have to recompile sensor firmware. That happened to me with telegram bot for example.

Following example shows how to make https get call without verification of ssl certificate. it uses one field value, but if you look at thingspeak documentation you can learn how to send more fields in one get request:

http_request:
  useragent: esphome/device
  timeout: 10s

sensor:
  - platform: bh1750
    name: "BH1750 Illuminance"
    #address: 0x23
    #internal: true
    measurement_time: 31
    update_interval: 5s
    filters:
      - lambda: |-
          WiFiClientSecure wifiClient;
          wifiClient.setInsecure();
          HTTPClient http;
          http.begin(wifiClient,"https://api.thingspeak.com/update.json?api_key=C.........5&field1="+String(x));
          http.GET();
          DynamicJsonBuffer doc(2048);
          JsonObject& root = doc.parseObject(http.getStream());
          return x;
2

What is the advantage of sending stuff to thing speak?

3

Hello. Thingspeak is IoT frontend of MathWorks and MATLAB, so it allows very advanced processing of values from sensors. Scripting and automations as well.

I personally use it because there are better widgets for android phones to display mini graphs than for home assistant.

4

Thanks, I genuinely was interested :slight_smile: