M5Stack Atom Lite

ESPHome
1

Hi, I have just bought the Atom Lite and have no idea how to install it. I have tried using the information on the M5Stack website but Windows won’t install the drivers.

Do I need to install UI Flow?

Do I need to somehow set the Atom up on my PC first?

Thank you

2

https://web.esphome.io/

3

What do you want to use it for?

4

So in other words, it’s just a bog standard esp32 with USB-C and 4 MB flash, popular choices (among others!) would be:

  • flashing tasmota
    • configuring the peripherials (GPIO assignments)
    • setting up mqtt or matter on tasmota to expose its features to home assistant
  • using esphome (either within home-assistant via the esphome builder add-on (as described below) or standalone)
    • creating esphome builder device (giving it a name and selecting esp32)
    • using the skeleton YAML and extending it to the desired model specific YAML configuration
    • letting esphome builder compile an image
    • transferring it to the device (you can select weather it should be flashed directly to the esp32 connected to the home assistant system via USB or (if you are using a chrome based browser) via USB on the client or if you just want to download the resulting image for manual flashing via esptool)

Which route to follow is only up to you.

Flashing works via the USB-C port and the usb2serial adapter behind it, if you are on windows you will have to install the corresponding drivers (and might have a little fun finding the correct ones, multiple possible options, potentially fake usb2serial chips, rejected by some driver versions, etc.), if you are on linux it’s likely to be considerably easier (‘all’ drivers usually preinstalled, less picky about counterfeit usb2serial chips).

In case you’re using esphome and if in doubt, connect the esp32 directly to the haos host for the first flashing (at least if you’re running haos on the bare iron, virtualization might make this a tad more complex, configuring USB pass-through et al). Even if you make a mistake, you can (pretty much) always start over again, from clean sheets (using esptool, you can backup the complete flash contents, erase the whole flash, write a new image to flash, etc. pp.), and write a new firmware image to the esp32.