Tasmota and Home Assistant: Local Control, MQTT and Firmware Updates
Tasmota is open-source firmware for many ESP-based smart devices. The useful bit for Home Assistant users is simple: the device can work locally, without needing somebody else’s cloud to turn your light on.
How Tasmota talks to Home Assistant
Tasmota commonly uses MQTT. Configure the Tasmota device with the address and credentials for your MQTT broker, then add the Tasmota integration in Home Assistant. Once connected, Home Assistant can discover the device and its entities.
Secure the local interface
Set a username and password on the Tasmota web interface. Local does not mean it should be left open to everybody on your network.
Useful Tasmota settings
The web interface exposes Wi-Fi configuration, MQTT, timers, logging, module/template settings and the console. Templates define what the ESP GPIO pins actually do for a particular device.
Firmware upgrades
Tasmota can update over the air. Older ESP devices can have limited flash storage, so the upgrade may temporarily use the smaller minimal firmware before installing the full release. Once an upgrade has started, give the device time to finish rather than repeatedly rebooting it.
Back up configurations
Before changing templates or doing significant maintenance, use Tasmota’s configuration backup. It is much nicer than trying to remember which GPIO pin did what.
Managing lots of Tasmota devices
If you have many devices, Home Assistant can build a dashboard from template sensor data showing firmware versions and device URLs. An MQTT script can also request upgrades, although I recommend updating one device first and giving it time to prove stable before updating everything.