Installing ESPHome Manually¶
Windows¶
Download Python from the official site.
Make sure you check “Add Python to PATH”, and go all the way through the installer.
Log out and back in, or restart your computer. Whichever is easiest.
Open the start menu and type cmd. Press the enter key.
In the terminal that comes up, check that Python is installed:
> python --version
Python 3.10.1
Note
Don’t copy the >. That’s used to show that this is a command that goes
in the console, and to let you see what the expected results are (shown on
the next line without a >)
Looks good? You can go ahead and install ESPHome:
> pip3 install wheel
> pip3 install esphome
And you should be good to go! You can test that things are properly installed with the following:
> esphome version
Version: 2021.12.3
Mac¶
There are no tested installation instructions for Mac. ESPHome does support Mac & will run with no problem.
Contributions are welcome!
The process will likely be similar to Windows. You can install Python from the
official site, and then install ESPHome with pip3 install esphome. You can
then test that things are properly installed with the following:
$ esphome version
Version: 2021.12.3
Linux¶
Your distribution probably already has Python installed. Confirm that it is at least version 3.9:
$ python3 --version
Python 3.9.15
Looks good? Now create a virtual environment to contain ESPHome and it’s dependencies.
$ python3 -m venv venv
$ source venv/bin/activate
You may or may not see (venv) at the beginning of your prompt depending on your shell configuration. This indicates that you are in the virtual environment.
You can go ahead and install ESPHome:
pip3 install esphome
Caution
Don’t use sudo with pip. If you do, you’ll run into trouble updating
your OS down the road.
For details, see DontBreakDebian.
pip install is equivalent to make install in this context. The
advice in the article applies to all Linux distributions, not just Debian.
Some people install ESPHome without the virtual environment, which can lead to issues with PATHs etc. Non virtual environment installations are considered not “supported” as people end up having to know your exact system setup.
At this point, you should be able confirm that ESPHome has been successfully installed:
$ esphome version
Version: 2022.11.4
If you get an error like “Command not found”, you need to add the binary to
your PATH using export PATH=$PATH:$HOME/.local/bin.
To set this permanently, you can run echo 'export
PATH=$PATH:$HOME/.local/bin' >> $HOME/.bashrc, then log out and back in.