NSPanel / ESPHome Offline Control of Groups

ESPHome
1

Hello everyone, first post so please forgive the questions

I am looking at installing ESPhome onto a Sonoff NSpanel

I have a fully working Home Assistant install that controls various sonoff devices without any issues.

What I need to be able to do is control a group of devices from the NSpanel but totally offline, with no internet connection.

I help run a very small charity music festival and we need to control various devices around the area from a small robust screen of the NSpanel, but they will be in groups, the groups work perfectly in Home Assistance but I need the groups to work from the touchscreen on the NSpanel with absolutely no internet connection.

Will ESPhome on the NSPanel help me achieve this please? or do i need to look down another avenue for control?

2

You should take a look at esp-now. https://community.home-assistant.io/t/my-esp-now-integration-library-enable-direct-communication-between-your-esphome-devices-even-without-wifi-router/213681

Should work with esphome on the nspanel in theory.

3

I have not tried using groups but I’m sure it will work.
It’s just a configuration thing.

There are a few ways people configure the screen inputs, either that each button press triggers something in ESP-Home where you make a service call from ESP-Home just like you would do in developer tools.
Or, as I do, “send” a string to HA from the screen via ESP-Home that HA triggers on and does the actions.

4

How does ESP-Now communicate with the screen? I doubt this will work.

The GitHub page says there is no changes for two years on the project. That makes me doubt it even more.

5

Esp-now does not communicate with the screen. But there is a custom Esphome component that does: https://github.com/sairon/esphome-nspanel-lovelace-ui (don’t be fooled by the name, lovelace ui, that’s just the ui style.)

Esp-now is just he component that makes point to point communication between esp’s possible.

6

So…
The ESP chip in the NS-panel communicate with another ESP chip that does what?

7

I’m sorry, I was under the impression that you had the same problem as the TS.

If your problem is controlling other esp devices (lights, relays , shelly etc.) from the nspanel without a internet or wifi connection and/or HA instance, the aforementioned can be a solution.

8

No internet connection is not the same as no wifi in my opinion.
But OP has to clarify this.

9

Trying to re-open the thread. I have encountered the same problem. The flashed NS-Panel uses an AppDaemon python app : NsPanel Lovelace UI Docs. It runs flawlessly, until the internet is off… then the NS-Panel freezes. One of the reasons I suspected was the dependancy to the babel package (when installing the app, it’s required to configure App Daemon while specifically asking babel to be installed)…
the reason I thought about this is because whenever the AppDaemon needs to restart, it has to redownload the babel library and instaling it again… so I have been trying to modify the code in the backend (nspanel-lovelace-ui/pages.py at 3a056e770e0777f1880dfb66120cfbca54b09791 · joBr99/nspanel-lovelace-ui · GitHub) to remove any mention to babel library but nothing yet worked.