You are such an excellent instructor on some rather complex home automation setups. I sincerely thank you for your excellent videos.

Learned so very much through your videos. Thanks a lot for you work and keep up with it!

Nice comparison. Thanks!

Sweet Video, great information. I learn something on every video you do. Keep up the good work.

That answered every question i had about those two, and i learned two new things. I do really like mqtt in that whenever i screw up HA, all the mqtt devices still work.

This is the video I have been waiting for. I have wanted to flash all my Tuya devices for some time but was lost as to what to flash to ESPHome orTasmota. Thanks for clearing this up for me. I am sure I will still have many questions but this is great information and inspiration to get me going. Very much appreciated.

thats exactly what i needed, THX!

Thanks for this. A video topic long overdue.

Thumbed up as soon as I saw your music intro!

Travis, Your the man. Thank you so much for your videos, especially this one. You answered my last question as to which one to use Tasmota or ESPHome. I finally got around to flashing my first smart plug successfully and am on my way to being totally out of the cloud. I used at least 3 of your videos to make it all happen but now I can say I have been Tasmotized. Now on to flashing the rest of my IOT's

Really informative and well presented!

My rule of thumb is mostly using esp home for custom sensors and then tasmota for prebuilt/store-bought sensors. but as always there are a million different ways of doing stuff in HA and as long as what you are doing is working for you then there is no issue.

Great comparison. I switched from Tasmota to ESPhome last year. I like the "create a dedicated binary" over the "configure a generic binary", as it allows for smaller binaries. Also ESPhome allows me more flexibility when adding non-standard scripts and functions to run locally. But I recommend Tasmota for beginners who do not often write code.

Perfect timing for this video! I recently started using tasmota and was planning to check the differences with esphome. Sounds like I’ll stick to Tasmota for now. Thanks again!

Travis, Great, informative video (as usual). Thanks! P.S., LOL on the "couple of views" on that bulb video. ;-)

Thanks Travis.

Great video! For me what I like about esphome is that it reduces complexity if you don't have an MQTT server running anywhere.

Great comparison--Tasmota fanboi here, but I do have a single ESPHome switch in the HA setup just to stay current. I did NOT know about TDM, so I downloaded it. Great piece of software--thanks for sharing!

It's getting close to winter in Australia and I'd love to do a heat recovery system in my roof to blow the hot air from the roof back into the house. What is best for a project like this if I want to set up a rule that if the roof is hotter than the house it will turn on but work independently from home assistant if I need it to?

Interesting video, I like Tasmota and like the web front end on it for configuration. One thing, could you explain how I can calibrate a SHT30 plugged into a D1 Mini flashed with Tasmota? (The humidity value is very skewed)

Very interesting. I Will be searching your videos for one that hopefully covers from start to finish how to set up a Tasmota device for use with Home Assistant. NOTE: more and more folks are learning about HA and ESPhome unfortunately most instructions are not written for the uninitiated. My search for instructions for those just beginning to learn HA/ESPhome and now Tasmota is still in progress. (been at it for months) There are many videos out there but there are missing steps and I can understand why. I mean after something is done for so long details tend to be forgotten and even a seasoned user falls into this crack. Thank you for the video and off I go to research your videos for examples I can follow, fingers crossed.

nice !! another great vid mate

Great comparison and info . Currently I use both . I was struggling for weeks to get a tasmota garage sensor to keep states after reboots . The MQTT retain options were a nightmare for me as a beginner and the sensor was so unstable I almost ditched the project. If you totally understand MQTT you can probably figure it out , but after loading ESPhome on a NodeMCU without any changes my sensors were super stable . Even after reboots I didnt have issues . So pick your weapon wisely . Both are great products .

good informative video, thanks again. Recently notices under template for a power monitoring plug HLWBL CF1, HLWBL SEL assigned to GPIO pins . whats these? Did i miss something?

I use ESPHome when when I've soldered up some sensors to an ESP8266 or ESP32 device to do some function such as monitoring moisture levels for plants, etc. Here I've got great flexibility for sensors and even code how to interact with the sensors. I've used it on a few projects and it's pretty great.

Thanks for the video, @digiblurDIY. Do you have a video about using different subnets for your iot devices?

Any one knows how to mount an external drive and use it as a NAS in home assistant? (running on Pi4). Since the computer is always on and mapping a drive don't require a lot of processing power I wonder how this add-on does not exist yet.

Great video!!

Awsome video! I got a lot of insight from it! Can I ask you a question as you seem very familiar with IoT and home automation. I am using Home Assistant at home as well and I have a couple of wireless switches running Tasmota. A couple of days ago there was a power outage in the building and after the power returned those switches lost their entire configurations and were in the default Access Point mode where I had to connect to their wireless network in order to connect them to my home network's router. Do you know any way to automatically handle this situation? Thanks and all the best to you!

Please tell me more about the third party tasmota managing softwares that you mentioned. I didn't know such software exists. And they sound really useful. Do any of them let you send commands to the tasmota console without having to go to the individual device's page?

I was literally typing which one should I choose into the discord, when the notification came up

Hi, great video!. Just a question, do you know any way to us an ESP8266 directly connected to a MQTT broker? I mean, do you have a script to do that? The idea is to use a ESP8266 with some additional sensors connected to a MQTT broker. Do you have something like this? Any advice for that? Thanks!

Great video. Do you think it is safe to use ESPHome devices on main network? I like the simplicity of using device_name.local to add to HA. And seeing whether or not the device is online/offline in ESPHome dashboard which unfortunately I am unable to do if I separate them into Guest and main wifi.

How are you flashing the round plugs? I have been unsuccessful in getting tasmota on them. I'm ready to cut them open! :(

How you add your tasmota devices in HomeAssistant? Manul configuration or autodiscovery?

I've been using mostly Tasmota for flashing Sonoff and Shelly devices. Once I learned how to do the first one, the following devices were consistent and fairly easy to do (minus when needed to solder :-( ). Regarding MQTT, I think that has been pretty much transparent once I used the Mosquitto broker integration in HA. From there, it is very simple to configure Tasmota with the broker's details and that's it. For backup, I use Tasmo Backup. I found TasmoAdmin not usable at all, but your mileage might vary. I also wanted to experiment with ESHome, so I've got a Wemo device connected to a water pressure sensor. There was a learning curve for that process, but once done, it is not too bad. HA also improved since this video was made with adding the flashing part built into the integration, which is very slick. That sensor has been rock solid and working like a swiss clock. Thanks for the video!

Hi, I don't have a nas or hardware laying around to run HA or mqtt. Is tasmota enough for me? I just want to monitor my power usage using (PZEM 004T) and maybe control 2-4 bulb.

Thanks for the videos. I am trying to get into home automation with a purpose of toggling my ISP modem off and on when I loose connectivity to the Internet using a round plug like a Gosund. I believe this needs to be controlled by logic local to the switch since I may need to do the same with my access point. I have never programmed an Arduino or ESP but I do know how to program and figure there are examples out there to connect/disconnect WiFi and to ping a public IP. The question that I have is how do I go from code developed using something like a NodeMCU to flashing a sealed round plug. I am assuming I need a base framework like ESPHome or Tasmota to allow me to continue updating my custom firmware over the air. Any thoughts on what direction I should head? Thanks.

I use both tasmota and esphome. For light switches, dimmers and plugs I use tasmota. ESPhome is used for my custom projects that requires multiple sensors using i2c. ESPhome works really well on ESP32. Also Tasmota does not support ESP32 yet. I did not know about the MQTT auto discovery. Thanks for the video!

Great vid. Lot of good beginner info...and as someone else from the south I could care less *how* you prononce tasmota!

Thank you very much for the amazing information you put out there. Your method of training is great and I've watch most of your videos. I've recently managed to finally integrate a Tasmota device into HA using the Mosquito broker, but not before a lot of struggle. I finally realized the device had to be on the same subnet for it to work. This is not the case for my ESPHome devices. I have a Vlan for my IoT stuff that only lets mDNS, Bonjour, Avahi, etc. through. Is it possible to let my Tasmota devices get discovered in my configuration or does it need a firewall rule letting all traffic between networks? Thanks for your help and keep up the amazing work!

Found this video after watching your other "extremely informative and easy to follow" video for Tuya Convert and converting my plugs which works great by the way, I was just wondering if it was possible to convert from Tasmota to EspHome?, and if it's even worth it.

First Tasmotoe!

The main reason for the to ditch the MQTT protocol over the ESPHome API was the speed, and it is very notable. You may not see it when you press a button on HA, but lets say you have a PIR or a switch to turn on the lights, the communication goes to the MQTT broker, HA, Node-Red, after that goes back to the HA, MQTT broker and to another wifi node! You can see the delay with MQTT and with the ESPhome API you can not. With MQTT we have the the problem related with the last msg sent from the node that is still on the broker, and problems when you need to delete a node, with the ESPHome API you have no problems, everything works fine.

Is it true that ESPhome will soon have a music sync option for RGB bulbs? If not, what's the best firmware for an E27 style RGB bulb? Tasmota or ESPHome and which one will work better with Hassio?

Travis, I have discovery turned off because I hated having devices disappear when I had a power outage. Is there a way to keep devices adopted through MQTT discovery when they aren't available when the system doesn't see them? Thanks.

i use tasmota for lights, and esphome for sensors. main reason is that esphome better refreshes the state of sensors after power failure which happens often where i live

Hey, I had 2 sonoff flashed with esphome, so I recently updated them, after the update, they stopped connecting to homeassistance. even though their led are flashing but no sign of them on my wifi {using Fing App} Please help, I do not want to reinstall them because I have installed the sonoffs inside the cable extension plug and ceiling light.

Thanks for this great video. The trick of SetOption13 does help a lot. There are couple of instances ESPHome is faster still. When I'm switching sonoff after some time of inactivity, like we do in most house lights, there is a delay, but if you keep flipping the switch then it is instant fast, not sure if related to device waking up, sleep mode or whatever, but ESPHome is def faster there. Second instance, when I integrate to Home Assistant service, ESPHome perform better than Tasmota + Node Red. Last, when I use for blinking light or beep a buzzer, Tasmota not consistent and have a noticeable delay vs ESPHome that works sharp.

I am choosing Esphome for simple reason: I had bad times for removing auto discovered mqtt devices from HA. 😩

A magor difference with Tasmota over ESPhome is the Hue Bridge option, I find for my lights Home assistant Hue Bridge option for Alexa gets the colours mixed up where the native Tasmota doesn't. One thing both can't seem to do in Home Assistant as good as the native firmware of WRGB bulbs is to combining the white colours so when you are on the white section of the colour wheel it produces RGB white and not true white, this is a different slider.

I've been using Tasmota for a while (albeit only on one device in anger at present) and I'd heard of ESPHome recently, so I thought I'd check it out. Every other article I read was largely inconclusive, but made me think ESPHome might be a winner. However, watching your video has convinced me otherwise. I don't have anything fancy, just plugs and bulbs, so I don't need the configurability that ESPHome offers, plus the options for cocking up the config and bricking a device seems just a bit too high a risk. Since there's no real speed difference and I've been happy with Tasmota and MQTT till now, I think I'll be sticking with what I know. So thanks for helping me make up my mind and save me some time, much appreciated 👍

I'm new to HA so come from the perspective of what was easy for a newbie to get going. I was trying to configure a 5 led strip of individually addressable RGB leds (WS2812B). I was creating an indicator panel (for who is home and what's the weather etc each state would be represented by a different colour led). Tasmota was fine to control to control the colour of the whole strip but controlling each led didn't seem possible. ESPHome was relatively easy by comparison. So once I got the led strip going I converted my Sonoff TH16's to ESPHome as well. So I'm now an ESPHome fanboy.

20 seconds in and "*uck yeah bring on a proper Tasmota V ESPHome breakdown"

The fact that ESPHome doesn't require an MQTT broker is why, as a beginner in all things Home Assistant, I chose it over Tasmota. I love that I could just Tuyaconvert it with my generic ESPHome firmware file, then modify it to what I want in the dashboard and then HA just automatically detects it and pops up a notification. I haven't used Tasmota at all, haven't needed to, but now that I'm pretty well initiated into the whole home automation world, I could have a play. I think, for beginners running just HA, ESPHome has the edge over Tasmota purely for ease of integration.

Thanks, Travis great comparison...I have currently 103 IoT flashed with Tasmota...I have now gone back and set option for auto-discover and speed... thank you...I have 25 K36 Kuled switches and I need to leave the "module type" at Sonoff Basic (1) for it to work properly..the KULED (0) messes up the switch at the wall...any ideas?

If you want to operate switches and relays, i.e. these plug-in sockets, then Tasmota is easy. Even if the sensor is supported. But if you want to make complicated changes in the .bin then ESPhome is more suitable.

Why "Tasmoto" instead of "Tasmota" though? Is this some inside joke I don't get?

This puts the speed business to rest. Cheers man

I'm surprised no one ever mentions ESPEasy. It still serves a good purpose.

I watch every one of your videos but I still can't switch from Smartthings to HA. For the 4th time over 2 years I installed a HA update and I am unable to see my HA raspberry pi install. Very frustrating and unreliable, now I have to start over again

You dont mention how hard it is to find the exact setoption-config of a unit on Tasmota where you have to go into console & check each option, like so with any other console-config command, Thats why i replaced Tasmota with ESPHome...Beside that when using autodiscovery the entities made are stuck in Home assistant/MQTT if either the unit breaks or you use it for another purpose & forget to Setoption19 0 before you flash the unit again....Also on ESPHome you just make a switch AND a light-output for the relay & then you can choose in HA which entity serves the purpose best...Tasmota..Setoption bla forgotten & so on :-)

Hate yaml, but when i need to do something with servos or sensors I will go with ESPHome, Tasmota is too buggy and messy, only suitable for well known devices. But its always better to have an arduino project with wifi and json rest setup as a a template for any new IoT device, always works like a charm.

After seeing how easy it is to manage a Tasmota Device and the MQTT side of things I'm definitely giving it a go. After having 25+ ESPHome flashed devices and constantly struggling with API dropouts clogging up my logbooks for nearly a year I'm happy to try the 'dark side' :D Thanks for the well-informed tutorial! Keep up the good work with TasMOTO

Thanks nice one. Though if you put “vs.” in the header you should openly says which one :)

Next video, start calling it Tasmotie

One advantage I see with MQTT versus API is that with the prior you don't need any single computer at home, and you can control and monitor the system without opening any port on your firewall. The ESPs are only clients on MQTT. Mosquitto may sit anywhere. I am not a friend of RP and even NUCs and the like. I rather rent a virtual server for 5 bucks a month and run mosquitto, nodered, possibly home assitant on there . A pity that Home Assistant does not support containers as well and pretends a separete machine with a separate operating system. I don't have to worry about electricity. For alarm systems I can use a charged through old phone as a hotspot gateway to my virtual server, and somebody cutting electricty before breaking in cannot compromise the alarm system. The phone will continue to maintain connectivity for a couple of hous. No need for a UPS on ethernet switches, the RP, a nuc or anything. A phone is its own UPS. No messing with SD cards. And backups can be totally automised and stepping back is trivial. In particular when you want to control and monitor several distant residences it is easy to integrate them into a single system. Reassuring to always know that you holiday hut is warm enough to not freeze the pipes and well above dewpoint without havining to give it a separate raspberry. In Europe internet also mobile is dirt cheap and coverage is very good. Many people have switched from Pies to NUC, because really noone anylonger use the GPIO pins on the server. I don't want to burn the 60 Dollar Pie short circuiting the wrong pins. An ESP is just a couple of dollars and can talk directly to the remote virtual server through the phone. Burning it hurts much less in terms of money and set-up effort. If you want to connect to weird but at times usefull radio standards, there are hubs for Bluetooth you cann connect to any USB connector without a computer but just power behind it e.g. for bluetooth. RPI to NUC was the first step, NUC to Virtual server in the cloud the next logical step. Your explanation are really enlightning. I like the unpretencious format and openness. For me personally HA is an overkill. I much prefer nodered. I have no need to monitor the powerlevel and location of my phone in my home control software. Flipping switches, getting alarm notification on IR and door sensors is good enough for me.

Tasmotooooooo

I worked for 2 days trying to configure a static IP using ESPHome on a Milfra MA05 because of 2 sensors and a button. I never got it working. ESPHome thinks setting a static IP is a bad "user experience". I had a real bad experience not being able to. They have documented a way to manually set an IP, but it breaks other things so it is useless. I'm tired of Nabu Casa trying to make things super simple for newbs at the expense of taking things away from those that know how. Want an idea for a video? There you go, set a static IP using ESPHome.

continue with tosmata

So is PCBWay Chinese then if it is I for one will not be using it

TasmotA not tasmotO

I love your vids, but can you please stop saying TasmotO? 🤣

TL;DR: Tasmota (left) is noticeably slower than ESPHome (right). Both are fast enough anyway.

TasmotOOOOOOO? Have a little respect for the project and call it by its actual name please.