Trying to recover 'bricked' device

ESPHome
11

Go to “settings / addons / EspHome / configuration”
then click on “Show unused optional configuration options”
Enable “status_use_ping”
restart the esphome addon and the device should now show as online :crossed_fingers:

Hope this helps you :grinning:

12

I already have that set because my ESPhome devices are on a different VLAN. All my other ‘good’ devices talk to HA fine.

As I mentioned at the start, this one won’t respond to pings.

13

:pensive: that sucks… not another trip to Bunnings.

Out of interest what Brilliant garden light controller are you using?

14

The problem is the later versions will not be tuya-convertable and it’s a sealed unit.

https://brilliantlighting.com.au/product/smart-wifi-rgb-garden-light-kit-b70c75

15

EDIT: the ESP has the correct IP address and does give my laptop an appropriate one also.

With my laptop connected to the ESP’s AP I can ping the ESP but every time I get 25% packet loss.

It doesn’t seem to be creating the web server as I can’t access anything on its IP address.

16

What is the “correct” IP address? I (still) would expect it to be

beside serving connected clients (your laptop) with something like 192.168.4.x

Did you yet try to activate the "OTA safe mode”? Should be as “easy” as interrupting the boot 10 times in a row

17

I see from your YAML above you didn’t include your web sever config. Did you leave it out for security when posting? Was looking to see if you had added a URL for it rather than just ip address. Have in past been unable to connect to things by ip but got in through host name. I have read before that recommended not to add webserver by OTA due to resizing of partitions.

Also just checking that the ip address has been reserved and your not trying to connect to address the DHCP has handed out again.

I think at this stage I wouldn’t be able to stop myself cutting open that case, reflashing and rehousing in case with suitable IP rating.

18

As ota is included it should be no problem to recover the device using the “safe mode” (described in my last post). The web server isn’t needed for this to work. :bulb:

Cutting the thing open might be a choice (often only a destructible one :hammer:) but I doubt it’s a smart one at this stage were ota recovery should be doable :ok_hand:

19

When I connect to the device’s AP, the device has an IP address of 192.168.30.121 and it’s allocating 192.168.30.122 to my laptop.

I didn’t know about this, I’ll have to give it a try.

Hmmm. I totally missed that this was missing… that would explain why I can’t connect via a browser! I must have accidentally removed it or something as it is present in an identical device that is currently online.

20

I’ve just read through the docs about this and I’m a little confused as to how I can trigger the device to enter this mode given that it doesn’t have any physical button and is completely sealed. Based on your previous comment, would I just power cycle the device quickly 10 times and hope that it is before the ESP fully boots?

21

Essentially. But hope isn’t really necessary as esphome set’s the “successful boot” flag not right after booting (typically only a few seconds) but has kind of a “cool down” till it declares a boot “successful”. So just power cycle it like 10 times every 10 seconds should easily let you activate the safe mode.

But one thing you can even try even before activiting the safe mode is to just try to ota it directly:

So in that case if you have esphome locally installed (for example with pip) on your laptop you should be able to call:

esphome run garden_lights_front_1.yaml --device 192.168.30.121

from the terminal to verify, compile and ota upload directly to 192.168.30.121

22

Thanks for all that, I’ll give it a try tonight.

23

Sorry to be a noob here but I get the following error:

C:\Users\David>esphome version
Version: 2022.9.0

C:\Users\David>esphome run garden_lights_front_1.yaml --device 192.168.30.121
←[32mINFO Reading configuration garden_lights_front_1.yaml...←[0m
←[31mERROR Error while reading config: Invalid YAML syntax:

Error reading file garden_lights_front_1.yaml: [Errno 2] No such file or directo
ry: 'garden_lights_front_1.yaml'←[0m

C:\Users\David>

So I have no idea where I need to save the yaml file…

24

You can just open the terminal in the folder where the file is located and then just run the esphome ... command.

At the moment you are running esphome in that path: C:\Users\David

Ether copy your yaml to that directory (your “home” directory) or just open a terminal in the directory that stores your yaml file already :+1:

25

Thank you. I’m a step closer, I get the .bin file complied and ESPhome tries to connect to the device but it fails to connect. Perhaps I’m not power cycling it properly to get into the safe boot mode. I’ll keep trying with various on/off timing.

error:

←[32mINFO Successfully compiled program.←[0m
←[32mINFO Connecting to 192.168.30.121←[0m
←[31mERROR Connecting to 192.168.30.121:8266 failed: [WinError 10061] No connect
ion could be made because the target machine actively refused it←[0m
26

Can you get logs from the device?

esphome logs garden_lights_front_1.yaml --device 192.168.30.121
27

Same error as above.

I’ll try a few more times to see if perhaps I’m not getting the device into safe boot mode.

28

And if that doesn’t work, it’s time for

Screenshot_20220922-123615_DuckDuckGo
Screenshot_20220922-123615_DuckDuckGo951×603 81.8 KB

29

@sparkydave

Here is a link from OttoWinter the founder of ESPHome. This should help and answer some questions.

30

Interesting. Ok, so I was actually preventing safe mode by power cycling rather than just leaving it for a while.

Back to the test bench…

Thanks for the info Blacky