Renaming yaml/name

ESPHome
1

What’s the easiest way to change the yaml config name and the device name of a device which already runs ESPhome ?
For example : i’ve got a LSC ( Tuya) lamp flash with ESPhome, and the first / initial flash is : action lamp , so the name within de yaml : action_lamp . But because i changed the location of this lamp and want to rename the yaml and the nam to action lamp hal .
When i renamed this device within the standaard / initial yaml everyhing starts okay but when the last step -> flashing it’s there … the name can’t be resolved so the last stap fails .
is there somehting like a work around to solve this ? ( or is the FTDI flash way the way to go? )

2

Found it!

Here ya go :slight_smile:

Changing ESPHome Node Name

Trying to change the name of a node or its address in the network? You can do so with the use_address option of the WiFi configuration.

Change the device name or address in your YAML to the new value and additionally set use_address to point to the old address like so:

# Step 1. Changing name from test8266 to kitchen
esphome:
  name: kitchen
  # ...

wifi:
  # ...
  use_address: test8266.local

Now upload the updated config to the device. As a second step, you now need to remove the use_address option from your configuration again so that subsequent uploads will work again (otherwise it will try to upload to the old address).

# Step 2
esphome:
  name: kitchen
  # ...

wifi:
  # ...
  # Remove or comment out use_address
  # use_address: test8266.local

Cheers!
DeadEnd

11 Likes
3

This is working fine !

4

things are really complicated with ESPHome :confused:
I know ESPHome has a different approach, but with ESPEasy, you just change the name inside the device…

1 Like
5

(At least in recent versions of ESPHome) you could use --device option with for example the run command to specify the old name.

So the steps I do to rename a device is:

  • mv old-device.yaml new-device.yaml
  • Update new-device.yaml with the new name/settings
  • Flash the device with the new configuration:
    esphome run new-device.yaml --device old-device

Home assistant will apply the new values, to finish the rename you can remove the device from the ESPHome integration old-device, restart Home Assistant and new-device should be discovered :slight_smile:

6

A couple of clarifications to this useful bit of advice from @jpoppe . The last cli line did not work for me with SSH, but it does within a console inside the docker container. Secondly, the last bit, old-device in the CLI command actually needs to be an IP address, if flashing OTA. Then, everything worked great. Details are in the docs.

7

I succeeded with name changing using this method (on RPi), but had to add the use_address config under wifi with the actual IP address in step #2 before uploading would work - probably DNS not updating in time. Then # use_address out and re-load as a new step#3.

After finishing this, ESPHome is still “discovering” the new board for adoption (with the original name allocated by ESPhome web) even after I’ve got the renamed board working within HA/ESPHome.

I’ve deleted associated directories under …/config/esphome and restarted several times, are there other tricks I should try to clear this?

8

use_address works for me, but you have to rename twice - once with use_address and then once without to remove it from the code.

much easier is going to esphome, finding the node → 3 dots → rename.

2 Likes