Improvments to Insturctions and General Errors

[huwgul]

Hi,

I was working through the instructions provided within docs/install.md- This was much more of an efficient process than some of the video content. Mostly because it more up to date, well written and not full of crappy ads or someone who is just not interesting to watch (my preference are clear instructions).

Whilst this information was great, there is some discrepancies in what is written and what is presented. The one that caught me the most was step 8 presents (i assume) newer code, where the image presents the older code with much more stricter comments (i.e., do not change this) - I think it would be nice to be update the images to reflect the code. This is more just to provide some synergy, but also not to feel concerned that something is wrong. I felt like I was doing the right thing, but a lot of the video content (which i did work through) presents the older version.

After successful installation, I had some real problems with the device pulling the information from git when I loaded it. My device was resetting a lot and I couldn't find out why. I was powering my device via serial to load to unit, and then mains to see the install. This is a pain in the ass since the design of the device has that horrible clip that locks on to wall and difficult to remove. What was not clear at first was why something was going wrong when powered via mains. What I found was using the ESP home via serial to power the device and view the logs live. This changed everything. It turned out that there was an issue with the Wi-Fi settings, which i found very bizarre. Homeassistant and everything else i have connected has never had a problem, but this did. i also managed to balance my device on the wall to power it and easily remove it.

What I found was my logs were filling up with an inability to connect to my SSID. There is nothing fancy in my SSID, but what managed to kick it in to life was editing the config with some adaption to the code. Firstly, and i think this is where some more information is needed. It would be nice to display that the SSID and password can be set within quotations - I found this on the EPShome website. Step 10 says use !secret, but doesnt provide an alternative option for quotations - Again it links to a video, which then has ads, and I just dont want to watch a 30 second advert for a 1 min video (youtube is dire) - a small note would have saved half an hour.

What I found is my SSID had some capital letters in it. For example, "AbcdEfgh" - Just how it was setup and I wasnt not going to change it with 50+ devices I have. Within the logs, using !secret is was just pulling "abcdefgh" (bug?). Setting the SSID as text "" rather than !secret kicked it in to life (with correct format). I also had to set a manual IP address and DNS also - My preference. This would be another recommendation that I would like covered. I also set WPA2 as an option also - It would be good to include some more options for troubleshooting or expansion (or a link to FAQ)

Whilst I understand that this guide is not there to cover every point, I think it is very comprehensive and these are basic troubleshooting techniques to prevent someone scouring the internet for ambiguous fixes. These I figured out myself, however a lot of forum posts are where people are struggling with other issues such as inability to connect via serial (messing up the ability to fix it). Furthermore setting a fixed IP, and since it is not using DHCP, it is important to have DNS set - This was clear once I connected, since it could not pull the file from git. Easy fix, but I missed it.

If a user, who lets say is not experienced on this matter, faces the issues I did, they may find it frustrating the find an answer from other forums - Just some basic nudges in the right direction.

Lastly, what I say are general improvements, though this is fantastic and the guide is brilliant. Detailed, clear and comprehensive. Removing all the crap from eWelink is just brilliant and it actually makes the unit usable with HA. Once it kicked in to life, it was more easy to follow the blueprint and just tinker, which we all want to do.

Keep up the good work and look forward to the next versions.

Oh and If i missed this on the git - then egg on my face, and just nudge me in the direction. It was late last night I was trying to do it in the dark!

[edwardtfn]

What I found is my SSID had some capital letters in it. For example, "AbcdEfgh" - Just how it was setup and I wasnt not going to change it with 50+ devices I have. Within the logs, using !secret is was just pulling "abcdefgh" (bug?). Setting the SSID as text "" rather than !secret kicked it in to life (with correct format).

This is definitely a bug and probably on ESPHome side when handling secrets. I do have a mix of upper and lower case, but for password, and that works just fine with secrets.

Anyhow, you can bypass all the secrets conversions by doing WiFi credentials as a customization.
Something like this could be added to your panel's yaml and will overwrite the settings from our remote package:

wifi:
  networks:
    - id: !extend wifi_default
      ssid: !secret wifi_ssid
      password: !secret wifi_password

This can also be extended to your other WiFi settings. You can find here some more examples to inspire you.

Please let me know if this helped?