Home Assistant Refuses to add ESPHome Plug

richy

I’ve just received two ESPHome smart plugs - out of the box I connected them to my wifi no problem, but when I try to add them to Home Assistant it shows a dialog, with this error message:

Unable to connect to the ESPHome device. Make sure the device’s YAML configuration includes an api section.

Screen shot here:

The IP address is correct - should the port be different?

This is out of the box I’ve not done anything with ESPHome.

Cheers!

RebeccaH

Hi @richy

So, the port should be default. Are the plugs on the same vlan as your Home Assistant instance? Have you assigned a static IP address to the plug in your router’s settings?

richy

RebeccaH The plugs are on the same network - they show up fine in Home Assistant, I just can’t add them.

I’ve not assigned the plugs static addresses - they have just been allocated an address by DHCP. The only thing I do which may be slightly unusual is run my own DHCP server, so the router and DHCP server have different IPs. Not sure if that would be a problem?

RebeccaH

Hi @richy

Thanks for getting back to me so quickly.

A separate DHCP server shouldn’t cause any issues. (I do this too!)

Forgive me if I’m mis-understanding, but if the plugs are already showing in Home Assistant why are you adding them?

Look forward to hearing from you. 🙂

richy

RebeccaH So the plugs don’t show up on the home assistant ‘overview’ page where I can actually control them - I have to go to Settings -> Devices where they appear as ‘Discovered’ - so I hit the add button on the device, which shows this dialog:

Do you want to add the device Localbytes Plug PM 6920f2 (localbytes-plug-pm-6920f2) to Home Assistant?

I hit Submit, and what the hell it worked this time?! It didn’t work yesterday! Okay let me plug the other one in…hmm this one shows that dialog I posted at the start of this thread. The only difference between the two is I’ve left one plugged in (that one works now) and the other has been unplugged since I first tried (that one still doesn’t work).

I’m gonna leave it plugged in for 24 hours and try again. The only other thing that’s happened is there was an update to Home Assistant itself this morning.

I’ll let you know what happens!

richy

RebeccaH Just tried again after just 20mins or so and it worked. So there’s some period where there’s an issue - I must have tried for 10 mins or so at least when I first got them.

So all good now - any ideas what’s going on for that initial period?

RebeccaH

Hi @richy

How odd this is! I honestly can’t explain it, but glad all is working.

Not something we’ve come across before! However, if the issue occurs again do reach out!