Introduction to ESPHome in Home Assistant

Thank you for watching. In this video we will introduce you to ESPHome in Home Assistant.

ESPHome is an addon for managing ESP32 and ESP8266 microcontroller-based devices. These are available as ‘development’ boards or part of a complete device. Using such boards, you can create your own devices - for instance a multisensor for a room, monitoring movement, temperature etc.

This video takes you through the basics and is the first in a series of videos on ESPHome. We’ll add an ESP controller (in the video we used an ESP8266 NodeMCU board). We however won’t go into setting up sensors in this video, this is planned for a future video.

There are many different ESP boards available, here is a selection of these at both Amazon and AliExpress.

ESP32

Amazon:

AliExpress:
Per unit (order more or add to your order to get quicker and/or cheaper shipping)

ESP8266 (NodeMCU)

Amazon:

AliExpress:

Per unit (order more or add to your order to get quicker and/or cheaper shipping)

Please like and subscribe, and click on the notification bell so you can be alerted to new videos. Please also consider being a patron at Patreon (link below).

If you would like us to create videos on a particular topic, technology or product, please leave a comment below.

Chapter links:
0:00 - Intro
0:52 - Which ESP device?
1:37 - Install ESPHome addon
2:21 - Adding a new device
4:52 - Integrating device with Home Assistant
6:23 - Next Steps

The below is optional but this will help us to purchase kit for review, and to keep up with channel expenses (studio equipment, etc). We may earn a commission if you purchase something through these links.

BTC: bc1qdhnyctwr455vwskhjwl04dm9hucjq55yxyy9cu
BCH: qr4jur8nuf7cjmctwjheyfsq39l93lesgvgz7snj3k
ETH: 0xBB6601Be92F27D688F3a47e952866Cb68d1E2170
DOGE: D5ZBGuoJQmqMkdJjjosw4JsYgp95b1CL56

[edgar]

Thanks! I followed your instructions in February 2024 with the up-to-date versions and most of what you say is still correct. A few things are a little different, but similar enough to understand.

[BACRULES]

Great. Can you make ESP using a realy 5v. i whant to controll some LED lights on 5V using a relay

[MrBobWareham]

I have tuya Zigbee devises, so can I change over to Home assistant and use my devices?

[frankhovis]

1:47 - Where does "home assistant" come from?

[Kylian]

I will just get a "key is invalid. Please ensure it matches what you have in your configuration" error when i try to add the esp to home assistant

[maciejmar]

when do you put hier next step how to configure ESPHome (e.g. temperature and humanidty sensor DTH22)

[rutgervanwalbeek]

Process stops with with following messages
Leaving...
Hard resetting via RTS pin...
INFO Successfully uploaded program.
INFO Starting log output from /dev/ttyUSB1 with baud rate 115200

Anyone a suggestion? I thaught that my output port and cable were too fast maybe for this baud rate, so I plugged it into an ancient usb adapter (which I used before for this purpose) but no ... nothing happens
Screen of the device stays black/dead.
Any suggestion is welcome

[marcel]

Mine doesnt Show „add-ons“, someone knows why?

[BlondieSL]

I've not yet worked with ESPHome, but plan to soon.
I just want to confirm (as I have no clue yet) when you talk about "Home Assistant" you are referring to Google Home Assistant, right?

We can interface ESPHome to our 'Hey google!" stuff?

While I'm at it, we have a lot of TP-Link outlets that are nicely controlled by Google Home Assistant.
Can these also be controlled via ESPHome as well?

Thanks in advance for any info.

[SBinVancouver]

Enjoyed the content; the background music I found distracting.

[n.r.]

Everything no longer works as described and the modified software can no longer handle older ESP installations once an update has been omitted.
I will keep my hands off ESP Home in future. The software has become less reliable with every update.