My first project needs a push in the right direction

OK, I’ve played around a little with other people’s code… what I want to know is where is the ‘hello world’ level stuff that I can start with a plain empty sketch on arduino and have a device connect with Home Assistant.

I feel dumb even asking this. SO lost right now because this is a side of programming I have NO experience in… just some basic arduino / ESP8266 stuff that was reading a temp sensor and sending data back to a google sheet is about all I’ve done. Nothing with the integration into HA.

You cant start even easier than an Arduino sketch by trying out Esphome, https://esphome.io/ which already have an integration with HA.

if you want to write your own code to talk with HA, looking at some of the Arduino mqtt examples would be a good start since HA has native support for mqtt.

I wrote my own integration for esp devices using a websocket connection to HA before I found the esphome project, but it gets more and more complicated, so now I use esphome whenever I can.

so that brings me in a totally different direction since I was just looking at that. Unfortunately, I used the new (I guess) directions to install HA that has the Supervisor which seems to be the new version of the Hass.io tab. Unfortunately, the apps don’t seem to be the same anymore, and I can’t install the ESPHome app from the new supervisor.

And with the way things are installed from the HASS image I can’t even figure out how to SSH in (no username) to add it from the command line like it suggests on the page.

I know there has to be an easy guide somewhere, but I just seem to be running in circles.

Can definitely can install ESPhome on Home Assistant via the Supervisor tab. Follow the instructions here but replacing the HassIO menu item with Supervisor.

1 Like

I am running Home Assistant Core in Docker, so I am afraid I cant be of any help how to work with the add-on, but as I understand, everything is the same regarding functionality, but the menus have been renamed and moved around a bit.

You don’t have to use the add-on if it’s a pain getting it installed (though it should just be a case of adding a new repository at the most).
Esphome can be run from any pc/laptop that has python and pip - there are instructions on the site for manual setup.

I must have read this about 10 times and it never clicked:

You actually have to add the repository first… THEN you can add ESPHome.

For whatever reason this just didn’t click for me:

God I feel dumb now :man_facepalming:

Don’t. To be honest the wording isn’t the best. Now that I read it, I definitely think it somewhat assumes familiarity with how adding external repositories work. Something not everyone does.

1 Like