Sounds like they’re network connected to me!

Back in the day HA was all about YAML. It's still there but mostly hidden behind the GUI but /config/configuration.yaml still does a lot of work.

ESPHome is simply amazing. I've got several ESP80266s with various lash ups all just working. For example, when my work computer room generator fires up a GPIO on a ESP8266 gets twitched from the power distribution board, another pin gives me mains power state from the perspective of the board. A few dozen lines of YAML - mostly copy n paste and I have a really decent sensor for less than £10 parts.

We test the system every few weeks by turning a key. The UPSs beep for a few seconds, and the genny fires up. After a while you turn the key back, the UPSs beep again and then the mains takes the load back. Meanwhile your phone goes off several times with notifications (SMS, Teams etc)

I particularly enjoy watching customer's expressions when I'm showing them around and I do a test there and then.

I'm just doing a link to our rather ancient building alarm to get notifications. This will be a ESP01-S thing to get it really small. I was quoted many £1000s for a "modern system" with an app etc. The existing sensors are fine and the alarm itself works fine. It now has a length of CAT5e connected to some of its terminals for an external sounder. It delivers 12V, earth and a 12V signal. I just have to turn the 12V into 3.3V via some Zeners and stabilize it with a capacitor to power the ESP and the signal down to 3.3V via some resistors. I think!

What would be a better option than YAML? The main advantages are ease of in-lining C++, and it's ubiquitous.

Having to use k8s at work also makes it not much of a context switch to use for me, and the secrets management is great using the `!include`s.

But yeah the killer feature here is the inlining of C++, and the use of platformio. You really can do anything without much work (maybe at most one or two external C++ header files for really custom stuff) inside ESPhome, and it's easy to see where your snippets go when you inspect the generated C++ code.

ESPHome just automates all the super tedious parts of working with esp32s (stuff like connecting to wifi, MQTT, OTA upgrades, logging to mqtt, etc), without sacrificing any power.

My only complaint is that because it uses arduino (I think?) you can't really do powersaving really well, but I don't think many people use battery powered esp32, but this basically eliminates that possibility, at least in my research.

The yaml files in ESPHome aren't any different than yaml for Git Pipelines, Docker, or K8.

The don't contain much if any logic.

Here's my garage door based on a Malouf ESP Dev board (https://maloufelectronics.com/):

    esphome:
      name: garagedoor

    esp8266:
      board: esp01_1m

    # Enable logging
    logger:

    # Enable Home Assistant API
    api:

    ota:
      password: !secret garagedoor_ota_password

    wifi:
      ssid: !secret wifi_ssid
      password: !secret wifi_password

      # Enable fallback hotspot (captive portal) in case wifi connection fails
      ap:
        ssid: "Garage Fallback Hotspot"
        password: !secret garagedoor_hotspot_password

    # Enable Captive Portal
    captive_portal:

    # Define Hall Effect Sensor
    binary_sensor:
      platform: gpio
      pin: 
        number: GPIO16
        inverted: true
      name: "Garage Door Sensor"
      device_class: garage_door

    # Define Relay
    switch:
      - platform: gpio
        name: "Garage Door Relay"
        id: garage_door_relay
        pin: GPIO14
        restore_mode: ALWAYS_OFF
        on_turn_on:
        - delay: 1000ms
        - switch.turn_off: garage_door_relay

In winter mode Home Assistant automatically checks if the bedrooms are cooler than the room with the fire, and pushes warm air if so.

ESP chips are great, and ESPHome makes programming them very easy.

ESP-MQTT allows more custom stuff, and I’ve done that via Arduino.

I’m sure someone skilled could make something very tidy, mine all all botch jobs, but 3 years later it’s still working fine without maintenance.

> $20 in parts

With how much ESPs go for right now I kinda doubt that, what's the whole BOM?

I recently got rtlsdr to read my water meter so I can detect leaks, which is pretty cool

https://esphome.io/custom/uart.html

This is a bit misleading, a single HASS developer requested their packages not get repackaged because they didn't want the support burden of users who think the software is broken when its actually due to packaging.

Originally on HN here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27505277

Both the GitHub issues have since been closed and settled.

It's useful and important to note that Home-Assistant's turnkey ease-of-use is partly because its acting as a package manager of sorts. When integrations and components are added by the user, their package requirements are downloaded immediately from the Internet and installed. This is quite contrary to the intended operation of NixOS and its immutable and reproducible package installation concept.

This is where the concerns of Frank came in, as a user of HASS on NixOS will likely have a sub-par experience and the documentation on the Internet for HASS will not work correctly for them in many cases. On the other-hand, I'm sure a decent amount NixOS users are probably aware of this (as I was when I was using NixOS daily).

My suggestion (and supported by the HASS founder) was that NixOS repackage HASS and call it something else, like how the code behind Firefox is repackaged without the Firefox name. This way at least NixOS users of it will get more appropriate Google results when searching for an issue related to their install, and are unlikely to burden HASS developers with support issues that are likely related to the install approach and not a HASS issue.

This was back in July of 2021, and I haven't followed up on it since, so I don't know if NixOS is doing this yet, or what the current state is there. But if you're running NixOS and want that turnkey experience, you're not going to get it.

If you want a full turnkey setup I'd highly suggest using HASS OS, whether on a small dedicated device, or in a KVM (https://www.home-assistant.io/installation/).