There's a lot to catch up on since my last post.
- WebThings is dead
- I've abandoned my custom ESP32/ESP8266 firmware
- I've discovered ESPHome
WebThings is dead
Ok, so it's not really dead. But it's dead to me. As I stated before, I ran into just too many limitations for it to be useful to me. At some point I thought Mozilla was going to shut it down, but instead they open sourced it. Open-sourcing it is great! But it was still too young for me at the time. Full steam ahead with Home Assistant!
Abandoning my custom LED firmware
I had a lot of fun using FastLED on and ESP* to create colorful things with WS2812B LEDs. I had the basics of a captive portal and storing custom settings, etc. I even cooked up some of my own animations. However, I discovered WLED. I plugged an ESP8266 into my laptop and installed a copy straight from my browser! :scream: Then with a little bit of configuration, it's controlling my WS2812B strips AND integrating with Home Assistant. This project is just amazing. It's got a ton of animations built in, has OTA update (Home Assistant will even let you know there's a new version available) and a mobile app! So cool. I wish I would have looked at it much sooner.
I discovered ESPHome
Many moons ago, I bought some really cheap RGB LEDS off of AliExpress or BangGood to go on my 3d printer. They weren't addressable, but offered an IR remote and, supposedly, wifi connectivity. The remote worked just fine, but the wifi was only usable with some janky 3rd party app that I wasn't about to install. So, I just suffered with IR control for a long time. Then one day, I decided to open the case and see if I could install some other firmware on there. With a little googling, I discovered that, if I was willing to do a little soldering, I could flash ESPHome on there and not only would it get me wifi connectivity, but it would get me wifi connectivity to Home Assistant! Sweet! Running ESPHome could be an entire blog post in and of itself. Maybe someday it will be!
There's more going on, but this is good for now. You're (mostly) caught up.