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Would there be interest for an ESPHome plugin ?

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    Would there be interest for an ESPHome plugin ?

    Hi,

    Would there be interest for an ESPHome plugin ? This plugin would automatically detect ESPHome entitites, given you are using MQTT.
    There's already the awesome McsMQTT plugin, but that needs 'manual' intervention for creating the devices. This plugin functions completely automatically, no interaction for device creation required. Based on the configuration of your ESPHome project, it will add the entities with correct icons, states, ...

    Currently got it working with sensors and switches. Will also add covers, lights, ...
    If there is any interest in the plugin, I will rework parts of it (some hardcoded values for my configuration - no config pages yet) and publish a beta in the coming weeks. The end product would be a paid plugin.

    For those not knowing ESPHome, it's a system to control the very cheap ESP8266/ESP32 WiFi microcontrollers via simple configuration files. I use them e.g. to monitor and control the status of my garagedoor, front gate, alarm system, ... . Total cost of HW: 5$ (controller, relay board, reed contacts - all connected to this microcontroller and publishing state via MQTT).

    This microcontroller opens up a whole new world for DIY electronics.

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    #2
    Yes, I have several of the ESP8266 devices but haven't had the time to put them to use. This plugin would be great!!

    Thanks,

    Ronnie

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      #3
      +1

      I like ESPHome a lot. Lots of active development.

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        #4
        I am on the verge of releasing a plugin that does this for the Shelly family of devices. I have it working with both HS3 code and HS4 code. Still has the same backend as mcsMQTT for the general cases, but recognizes the Shelly device topics and automatically configures HS devices for them. For example, the Shelly Bulb Click image for larger version

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          #5
          Would it also work for ESPHome? There you have sensors, covers, switches, lights ...

          It would also make it possible to "import" devices from HomeAssistant into HomeSeer. Only little code in HomeAssistant would need to be added. No configuration in HomeSeer, devices are automatically discovered and added.

          Not sure if mine would work for Shellies, I got none :-). It does work for EapHome and Tasmota


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            #6
            Tasmota has a wide variety of topics and supports user-configurable topic formats. How would one recognize a MQTT message as being for a Tasmota device and then how would it know with function that devices is supporting. Is it a relay/light, is it a RGB? is it an IR, etc? I would imagine the same issue occurs with ESPHome, but I have no actual experience with it.

            mcsMQTT is able to automatically create HS devices when it sees the topics. In 5.0.4.0 the capability was expanded to allow a subset to be auto-created based upon the user setup of the Wildcard Plugin Auto Associate Template on the General Tab, Inbound Management section. While it will automatically create devices it will only guess as the type of device based upon the payload that is received. For an example, an ON or OFF payload with produce a UI with button controls in HS. Is is not able to distinguish when a number box or a slider should be used. It has not learned when a color picker should be used as each product uses a different way to identify it's light control mechanism.

            For Shelly devices there is a fixed set of products and each product has a well-defined set of topics. Once the plugin recognizes the topic for a Shelly bulb it is able to create all the HS devices with the proper controls. In essence a front-end was created that has the smarts for specific devices to know what icons and controls should be used. This same approach can be taken for other well-defined products.

            I'm guessing you adopted a convention for your use of ESPHome and because of this you are able to have the smarts in the software to know what to expect. If there is a standard convention then everything that adopted it would be able to more easily intercommunicate such as HA and HS. I never really looked at ESPHome because I though it was something tailored to HA and I never tried to run HA.

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              #7
              If everything goes well, I will release a first beta version (for HS4) at the end of next week.

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                #8
                Originally posted by kriz83 View Post
                If everything goes well, I will release a first beta version (for HS4) at the end of next week.
                I would be interested in testing.

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