ESPresense room presence system.

In this tutorial we are going to create room presence sensors with ESPresense and our new developed Homey app.

Step 1: Install Homey apps

Make sure the following apps are installed:

• MQTT Broker
• ESPresense

Step 2 Configure MQTT Broker

Configuring the MQTT Broker app.

Open the Homey app -> naviagte to more -> navigate to apps -> navigate to MQTT Broker -> settings icon on the right top -> App settings

We are going to set the follwing options.

As port i am using 1884 you can choose what ever you want but I recommend choosing this port because it won't interfear with other MQTT servers.

The only checkbox you need: "Also allow unsecure connections"

Create a user, in my instance I am creating an user with username test and password test.

Save settings and then start the broker.

You should end-up with something like this:

Step 3: Configure your ESP32 with ESPresense

I am not really going into detail about how to install the ESPresense firmware since they made their own documentation.

Click here to see their documentation

Step 4: Configure ESPresense itself

Go to the IP address of your ESP32 in your browser and configure the following:

Configuration

Room: Your desired room name

MQTT

server: Ip address of your Homey

port: The port you have choosen in the case of this tutorial it is 1884

username: The username you have choosen in the case of this tutorial it is "test"

password: The password you have choosen in the case of this tutorial it is "test"

Uncheck "Send to discovery topic" <- since we don't use Home assistant

And press Save

You should end-up with something like:

Step 5: Adding your devices

This is the hard part but there are plenty of explenations online!

Make sure you do this in:

http://YOUR_ESP32_IP/ui/#/settings

Step 6: Configure the Homey ESPresense app

Open the Homey app -> naviagte to more -> navigate to apps -> navigate to ESPresense -> settings icon on the right top -> App settings

MQTT

Server: Your Homey server ip

port: The port you have choosen in the case of this tutorial it is 1884

username: The username you have choosen in the case of this tutorial it is "test"

password: The password you have choosen in the case of this tutorial it is "test"

Mapping

ESPresense ID: Your ESPresense id of the device, in my case: "irk:86....."

Usable name: How you want this device to be called in Homey, in my case: "Pixel 8 pro"

After this save the settings on the bottom of the page then restart the ESPresense app

Step 7: Add your ESP32 device in Homey

Add device -> ESPresense -> This should show up your rooms and add it

Step 8: Start creating flows