ESPHome Native API Binding

This binding makes ESPHome devices available in openHAB through the ESPHome Home Assistant Native API. This is an alternative to using MQTT and/or running Home Assistant in addition to openHAB.

It does NOT provide any webpage for managing the ESP themselves. Use the ESPHome dashboard for that.

Benefits of using the native API over MQTT:

• Very tight integration with openHAB, state patterns, options, icons etc fully integrated
• Robust and reliable communication - 2 way keep-alive pings at fairly short intervals lets you know if the device has gone offline
• No need for an MQTT broker (but that is nice to have anyway for other things :))
• Slightly faster than messaging over MQTT (according to the ESPHome documentation)

Read more here: https://esphome.io/components/api#advantages-over-mqtt

Getting started for non ESPHome users

1. Install ESPHome
2. Create an ESPHome configuration for your device
3. Flash the device with the ESPHome firmware
4. Install the openHAB ESPHome binding by copying the jar file here https://github.com/seime/openhab-esphome/releases/tag/latest_oh4 into your addons folder, or by installing from the Marketplace https://community.openhab.org/t/esphome-binding-for-the-native-api/146849
5. Wait for discovery to find your device - or add manually in a thing file.

Note: At the current state of the binding, it is highly recommended to use file based configuration for things and items as channel types etc most likely will change.

Streaming device logs

As an alternative to manually streaming device logs via ESPHome dashboard, you can have openHAB stream the device logs directly to openHAB - which will write them using the standard log system.

1. Make sure your ESPHome yaml is configured with a log level that produces the logs you want to see. See https://esphome.io/components/logger.html
2. Configure the deviceLogLevel parameter on the thing configuration. Valid values: https://esphome.io/components/logger.html#log-levels
3. The default log level in openHAB is WARN, so you need to add a logger named ESPHOMEDEVICEwith level INFO to see actual log statements. Either add this to your log4j.xml file or use the Karaf console:

log:set INFO ESPHOMEDEVICE

or

<Loggers>
    ...
    <Logger level="DEBUG" name="ESPHOMEDEVICE"/>
</Loggers>

This will produce logs on level INFO in the openHAB logs like this:

[2024-04-04 15:06:25.822] [varmtvann] [D][dallas.sensor:143]: 'VV Temp bunn': Got Temperature=21.0°C
[2024-04-04 15:06:25.834] [varmtvann] [D][sensor:094]: 'VV Temp bunn': Sending state 21.00000 °C with 1 decimals of accuracy
[2024-04-04 15:06:25.850] [varmtvann] [D][dallas.sensor:143]: 'VV Temp midt': Got Temperature=71.7°C
[2024-04-04 15:06:25.863] [varmtvann] [D][sensor:094]: 'VV Temp midt': Sending state 71.68750 °C with 1 decimals of accuracy

To redirect device logs to a separate log file, edit your log4j.xml file and add the following in the <Appenders> section:

<RollingFile fileName="${sys:openhab.logdir}/esphomedevice.log"
             filePattern="${sys:openhab.logdir}/esphomedevice.log.%i" name="ESPHOMEDEVICE">
    <PatternLayout pattern="[%d{yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss.SSS}] %m%n"/>
    <Policies>
        <SizeBasedTriggeringPolicy size="32 MB"/>
    </Policies>
</RollingFile>

And add the following in the Loggers section:

<Logger additivity="false" level="INFO" name="ESPHOMEDEVICE">
    <AppenderRef ref="ESPHOMEDEVICE"/>
</Logger>

Sending state from openHAB to ESPHome

You can send state to the ESPHome device using the homeassistant channel type. Only entity_id field is used.

You can listen for several types of OpenHAB events, default is ItemStateChangedEvent. The following are supported:

NOTE: EntityID in HA is case-insensitive - meaning only lowercase is used. Whatever you add in entity_id in the ESPHome yaml will be converted to lowercase. In OH item names are case-sensitive, so you > can have 2 items like MYITEM and MyItem, and we cannot distinguish between the 2. Avoid this setup.

NOTE2: In Thing UIDs, the : is replaced with _

Examples

Making state changes to OH temperature sensor available in ESPHome:

sensor:
  - platform: homeassistant
    name: "Outside temperature"
    entity_id: ItemStateChangedEvent.MyTemperatureItem
    device_class: temperature

Listening for commands sent from OH to some OH item and making it available in ESPHome:

binary_sensor:
  - platform: homeassistant
    name: "Flower watering activating"
    entity_id: ItemCommandEvent.WaterValve_Switch

Making ESPHome device react when a Thing changes status, ie goes offline/online:

text_sensor:
  - platform: homeassistant
    name: "ThingStatusInfoChangedEvent"
    entity_id: ThingStatusInfoChangedEvent.astro_moon_local

Time sync

Time sync from your openHAB server is supported using the HomeAssistant time source component.

time:
  - platform: homeassistant
    id: openhab_time

Iconify support

If you have the Iconify icon provider bundle installed, try configuring the icon field in the ESPHome yaml file. The binding will then use the icon from Iconify instead of openHAB classic icons .

sensor:
  - platform: uptime
    name: Uptime
    icon: "mdi:counter"

FAQ

• I get warnings like No device_class reported by sensor '<name of sensor>'. Add device_class to sensor configuration in ESPHome. Defaulting to plain Number without dimension

  This is because the ESP sensor does not report a device_class. This field is used to determine item and category type in openHAB. Solution: Specify a device_class to your ESPHome configuration. Example:
  
  See https://developers.home-assistant.io/docs/core/entity/sensor/#available-device-classes for valid device_class values (use lowercase values) Also note that you may override default device_class by specifying device_class: "" to remove any device class from the sensor.

Also see https://community.openhab.org/t/esphome-binding-for-the-native-api/146849/1 for more information.

Limitations as of 2024-06-17

Most entity types and functions are now supported. However, there are some limitations:

The following entity types are not yet supported (please submit a PR of file a feature request!)

• lock,
• camera
• voice
• valve

In addition, the Bluetooth proxy isn't ready yet.

Discovery

The binding uses mDNS to automatically discover devices on the network.

Thing Configuration

device Thing Configuration

Channels

Channels are auto-generated based on actual device configuration.

Full Example

Thing Configuration

esphome:device:esp1  "ESPHome Test card 1" [ hostname="testkort1.local", encryptionKey="JVWAgubY1nCe3x/5xeyMBfaN9y68OOUMh5dACIeVmjk=", pingInterval=10, maxPingTimeouts=4, server="esphomename", logPrefix="esp1", deviceLogLevel="INFO"]

Item Configuration

Number:Temperature ESP1_Temperature "Temperature" <temperature>   {channel="esphome:device:esp1:temperature"}
Number:Dimensionless ESP1_Humidity "Humidity"     <humidity>      {channel="esphome:device:esp1:humidity"}
Switch ESP1_Switch "Relay"                        <switch>        {channel="esphome:device:esp1:relay_4"}