ESPHome External Component Examples

This repository provides examples and basic empty components that can be used as templates to quickly develop your own external components for the splendid ESPHome ESP8266/ESP32 home automation system.

How to use

All sample components can be found in the components directory. The test_empty_components.yaml file provides configuration examples for the various external components. To use a particular component for your project, do the following:

• Create a components directory in your esphome configuration directory (the directory where your .yaml files are)

• Copy the directory of an empty component to components in its entirety, so you end up with e.g. components/empty_sensor/

• Find the configuration entry for the empty component in test_empty_components.yaml and copy it into your own .yaml file.

• Add the components directory as an external_component:

external_components:
  - source: components

• Compile with esphome compile your_config.yaml (change your_config.yaml to your own .yaml file) or compile with the dashboard.

• No errors? Great! You can now start modifying the empty component into your own external component.

Basic structure of a external component

Let's start with the simplest external component:

components
├── empty_component
│   ├── __init.py__
│   ├── empty_component.cpp
│   ├── empty_component.h
│  ...

The __init.py__ file contains 2 main things:

• configuration validation or cv
• code generation or cg

cv handles validation of user input in the .yaml configuration file for this particular component: defining the available configuration options, whether they are required or optional, any constraints on the types and values of an option, etc.

cg takes these validated configuration options and generates the code necessary to streamline them into your c++ code, as well as registering your component properly within the ESPHome runtime.

The .cpp and .h files are the main source code files for your component. You're free to add to or modify the structure of the source code within the constraints of c++, but your code needs at least one class derived from Component that will be registered in the __init__.py.

If your component yields a specific type of component, e.g. a sensor or a switch, ESPHome will instead look for a sensor.py or switch.py. The structure of these is identical to that of __init__.py.

See for example:

components
├── empty_binary_sensor
│   ├── __init__.py
│   ├── binary_sensor.py
│   ├── empty_binary_sensor.cpp
│   ├── empty_binary_sensor.h
│  ...

There is an empty __init__.py and most of the content goes in a binary_sensor.py.