ESPHome's MQTT client can publish a shutdown_message when a device restarts, shuts down or goes into deep sleep, so anything subscribed to the topic knows the device left on purpose. In practice that message often never arrived. A fix by bdraco, merged into the development branch on 25 October 2026, makes the client wait until the broker confirms i
A Bluetooth MIDI keyboard or pad controller has a row of keys, knobs and pads that could just as well switch lights or start scenes. A new ble_midi component in ESPHome makes that possible without a computer in between. The ESP32 connects to the MIDI device as a BLE client, turns incoming notes and control changes into automation triggers, and can
Two days after the delta_wallbox component landed in ESPHome, its biggest gap is closed. In the first version, merged on 23 October, the current limit of the Delta AC MAX charger could only be read, so an ESP32 could start and stop a session but not throttle it. A follow-up from the same author, epicRE, reviewed by bdraco and merged on 25 October 2
An ESPHome device that wakes from deep sleep and reconnects to an MQTT broker sends a SUBSCRIBE for every command topic it listens to, even when the broker still remembers them from the last session. A change by Rapsssito, reviewed by bdraco and merged on 25 October 2026 after more than ten months in review, adds an opt-in way to skip that step. Th
ESPresense, the ESP32 firmware for room-level presence detection that tracks phones, watches and BLE beacons and reports them over MQTT, is heading for version 5. The first v5 beta appeared on 11 October 2026, and the latest, v5.0.0b4, was published on 24 October. The stable release has no date yet, but it matters now for one reason: according to t
An ordinary HTTPS request from an ESPHome device has so far stopped everything else on it. The http_request.get, http_request.post and http_request.send actions ran the whole request in one go, and the main loop waited until it finished. On an ESP32-S3 that meant 2.5 to 3.6 seconds without reading sensors, refreshing a display or answering Home Ass
Companies selling products built on ESPHome will soon be able to produce a software bill of materials (SBOM) for its firmware without editing it by hand. Two pull requests merged on 24 October 2026 make ESPHome write the metadata that Espressif's esp-idf-sbom tool reads. The author names the reasons directly: EN 18031 and the EU Cyber Resilience Ac
ESPHome boards can already share sensor readings through packet_transport, over UDP or a UART. A new component, packet_interface, adds a level underneath: a common way to send packets over a link, with optional layers that resend lost packets, check whether the other side is still there and encrypt the traffic. The author, clydebarrow, split the wo
Most garage door and gate openers already have a wall button. Press it once and the door moves; press it again and it stops or reverses. An ESP32 with a relay can press that button for you, and two reed switches can tell Home Assistant whether the door is really open or closed. The parts cost little and the whole thing runs locally, with no cloud a
