Lost Home Assistant and ESPHome configs – how to reconnect to ESPHome devices without encryption key?

ESPHome
1

Hi everyone,

I had a working Home Assistant setup with several ESPHome devices connected. Unfortunately, my computer crashed and I didn’t have a backup of my Home Assistant or ESPHome YAML configurations.

I’ve now reinstalled Home Assistant OS on a new machine and I’m trying to reconnect to my existing ESPHome devices. I still know the IP addresses of the devices, but when I try to add them back to ESPHome or Home Assistant, it asks for the encryption key—which I no longer have access to.

Some important details:

  • I don’t have any backups.
  • I do know the IP addresses of all the ESPHome devices.
  • I may have physical access to the devices (USB), but I would prefer not to reflash unless absolutely necessary.
  • I’m looking for any way to extract the encryption key or YAML from the device if possible.

Is there any way to recover or extract the encryption key from the ESPHome device over the network or via USB logs? Or is reflashing the only option?

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks in advance.

2

No

Sure it’s not just stashed somewhere?

Not sure if it’s good or bad but I use same for all devices and store in password manager

Yes

Do you have OTA password.
That is what allows you to flash Device over network which would also allow you to recover without pain of physically connecting to the devices