Vendor-provided OTA updates

[mkarnebeek]

ESPHome now supports vendor-provided OTA binaries, bypassing the need to install the ESPHome addon for Home Assistant, and allowing for less tech-savvy people to not bother with yaml files. Also, OTA updates are then showing up in the Settings page of Home Assistant, instead of requiring a yaml update from ESPHome. This really streamlines this process, while having the yaml way of updating also available.

See https://esphome.io/components/ota/http_request/ for the details

Would Athom Tech consider supporting these? This would make updating for a few friends of mine way easier.

[MaJerle]

Also, OTA updates are then showing up in the Settings page of Home Assistant, instead of requiring a yaml update from ESPHome

If you enable the update entity (disabled by default), updates show in HA updates page.

You can already automate this.

[mkarnebeek]

Thank you for the quick response!

Any hints on where to enable it? I've been looking around, but I can't find it. Am I looking in the wrong place?

[Oinq]

Just go on all entities, and filter by integration and disabled

[Oinq]

My question is, in which way is this vendor-provided OTA binaries, different from clicking update?
Generally speaking I hate auto updates.

[mkarnebeek]

Sorry, I am missing something still.

I don't have any disabled entities for this device. I do see the update entities for Everything Presence Lite for example (also an EspHome device with vendor-provided firmware), and that works as expected (device has an update entity).

I have about 5 Smart Plug Without Relay's from Athom Tech, but also 2x just the Smart Plug. Maybe specifically these devices have an issue? I also don't see any config for vendor updates in this repo, but not sure if these files are slightly different from the vendor-built binaries?

[Oinq]

Are you using packages?

[MaJerle]

Is ota part configured for the devices that don't expose you the update entity?

[Oinq]

this is my yaml, it gets the packages and exposes what it needs to be exposed.

substitutions:
name: athom-plug-04
friendly_name: Garage Plug Rack1
packages:
Athom Technology.Smart Plug V2: github://athom-tech/athom-configs/athom-smart-plug-v2.yaml
esphome:
name: ${name}
name_add_mac_suffix: false
friendly_name: ${friendly_name}
api:
encryption:
key: xxx

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

[mkarnebeek]

Are you using packages?

For my own ESPHome projects, yes, unless I'm not aware of the "packages" concept in the context of vendor-provided OTA updates :)

Is ota part configured for the devices that don't expose you the update entity?

I don't know, as I don't manage the YAML for Everything Presence and Athom Tech bought devices. I have to go with that's provided in this repo, and that's only the esphome OTA provider. Not any vendor-provided one

athom-configs/athom-without-relay-plug.yaml

Lines 53 to 54 in 5eeaeea

	ota:
	- platform: esphome

this is my yaml, ...

Just to reiterate: there are two separate OTA paths supported by ESPHome. One is provided by the ESPHome Dashboard (or Builder as it's now called) pushing new binaries to the device, and the other one is a direct HTTP call the ESP device can make to an endpoint to check if there is a new binary available, provided by the hardware vendor, with the idea that the vendor makes updates available, so you don't have to have the ESPHome Dashboard/Builder installed in Home Assistant.

Everything Presence does this second path for example with their updates. See also this blog post from ESPHome which goes into a lot of details on how it works and why it works the way that it does:

https://esphome.io/changelog/2024.6.0/

These new update entities are a bit different. If you have acquired a device that was pre-installed with ESPHome, the vendor you acquired the device from is now able to compile the firmware and host it on a website along with a description of the firmware the device can read and present that there is an update available for this device. You do not need to adopt the device into the ESPHome dashboard, and you don’t actually need the ESPHome dashboard installed. Using the new http_request OTA platform, the device will be able to download the firmware and update itself.

Might this concept be unknown to Athom Tech yet?

@Oinq

My question is, in which way is this vendor-provided OTA binaries, different from clicking update?

See above ^^

[mkarnebeek]

@tarontop Would you be able to shed some light on this?