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arendst
Tasmota
C2017–2024
arendst / Tasmota

Tasmota

Alternative firmware for ESP8266 and ESP32 based devices with easy configuration using webUI, OTA updates, automation using timers or rules, expandability and entirely local control over MQTT, HTTP, Serial or KNX. Full documentation at

19Distinct people
24Mentions
0Explicit recommenders
25KGitHub stars
REPOSITORY AT A GLANCE

What to know before exploring

What it is

Alternative firmware for ESP8266 and ESP32 based devices with easy configuration using webUI, OTA updates, automation using timers or rules, expandability and entirely local control over MQTT, HTTP, Serial or KNX. Full documentation at

GitHub

Where it is used

No documented product use was verified in the last source check.

What people are saying

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No classified warning is attached to this page. Read the discussions before treating silence as approval.

Also in these discussions

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This week on Hacker News

Nov 7–Nov 14 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/14/2026, 3:56:07 PM UTC.

Smart home devices should work without the internet direct repository linkDebated

Participants argue that smart home devices should operate locally to prevent vendor lock-in, with some demanding refunds for cloud-dependent hardware while others note consumer preference for convenience over technical complexity. A secondary debate concerns the use of LLMs in generating discussion content, where users criticize AI text as inauthentic and complain about such posts.

442 readable replies · Supporting reply 1 · Supporting reply 2 · Supporting reply 3 · Supporting reply 4

Mentions over time

HN mentions by year24 dated mentions

Observed mentions: 2017-11-25 21:26:58 UTC to 2024-09-03 17:33:18 UTC.

02462017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 3 mentions; 0 submissions, 3 comments20172018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 5 mentions; 1 submissions, 4 comments2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 6 mentions; 1 submissions, 5 comments2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 5 mentions; 1 submissions, 4 comments20202021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 2 mentions; 0 submissions, 2 comments2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 0 submissions, 1 comments2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 0 submissions, 1 comments2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 1 submissions, 0 comments2024

Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.

View mention counts and date ranges
UTC ranges include their start and exclude their end. Select a period to filter the source evidence.
PeriodStart (UTC)End (exclusive, UTC)MentionsSubmissionsComments
20172017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC303
20182018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC514
20192019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC615
20202020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC514
20212021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC202
20222022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC101
20232023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC101
20242024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC110

What Hacker News says

24 sources
Many of these WiFi-LED lamps contain esp8266 devices, which have a lot of open source alternative firmware available, like esphome[0] or tasmota[1]. You can reflash them by opening them & connecting a cheap (1$) usb-to-tty adapter. If that isn't an option (for reasons like not wanting to permanently damage them or being afraid of electrical shocks) a lot of them come with tuya firmware, which you can (still) often exploit and convert with TUYA-CONVERT [2]. I found the Tasmota Device Templates Repository[3] to be a really valuable resource, although I've been using zigbee devices for lightbulbs. [0]https://esphome.io/ [1]https://github.com/arendst/Tasmota [2]https://github.com/ct-Open-Source/tuya-convert [3]https://templates.blakadder.com/index.html
In The S in IoT is for Security
There are a lot* of cheap 2.4Ghz wireless outlets that can be flashed with custom firmware that supports power usage & outlet control over MQTT & other protocols. Keep in mind that these devices have to be manually configured & calibrated. https://github.com/arendst/tasmota/ * Some new versions of these outlets come with firmware that can not be patched/flashed so do some research. Also most of these are limited to 10 amps of restive load... inductive loads like motors, compressors, and to an extent power supplies, will have peak loads 3-4x there 'real' consumption which can damage the relay if its not rated for the high initial load. If anyone knows of a cheap alternative or cheap DIY that can handle +20A I would be very interested as it would be nice to be able to control things like fridges without worrying the outlet will fail closed
Read the rest
& my food will spoil.
In IoTaWatt Open Source WiFi Electric Power Monitor
A ZigBee or Z-Wave stick + Home Assistant (or openHAB, Domoticz, others) gets you more reliable operation and no notifying $MEGACORP every time you flick a light switch (or something equally dumb). Devices based on the popular ESP8266 can also frequently be freed from their cloud overlords with community-made firmware [0], [1] and used as proper Intra-o-T devices. I decided a while back that I would have no part in this Inter-o-T madness and I think it was a good choice. [0]: https://github.com/arendst/Tasmota [1]: https://esphome.io/ Heh, just noticed you linked Tasmota as well while I was writing this. Good project, I use it too!
In Due to a problem with AWS, many "smart" vacuums or doorbells will stop working
Luckily, not everything uses WiFi. There are tons of Zigbee and Z-Wave devices which physically don't have a WiFi chip. Of course, you should build your own bridge to connect them to (rather than using the bridge of a big tech company). For Zigbee you can use the Conbee [0] and for Z-Wave you can use the Z-Stick [1] to build your own bridge. Furthermore, some of the cheaper WiFi devices that are based on the ESP8266 chip can be flashed with a custom firmware called Tasmota [2] to make them cloud-free. [0]: https://www.phoscon.de/en/conbee2 [1]: https://aeotec.com/z-wave-usb-stick/ [2]: https://github.com/arendst/tasmota/#readme
In Due to a problem with AWS, many "smart" vacuums or doorbells will stop working
My home automation efforts are pretty modest so far, but address definite pain points in my house. Not really automated at all, but there is a LED in the ceiling near the front door that flashes when the garage door is open[1]. Seeing that light when coming down the hall has saved us heaps of times from leaving the garage door open all night. I also have laser pointers hanging from the ceiling in the garage that are positioned so when the laser dot reaches the dash you know the car is in far enough. Another not quite automated addition is using a Sonoff wifi touch light switch[2] in the lounge room[3]. Reflashed with Tasmota it allows us to easily turn the overhead lights on and off from the same remote control for the TV, Amp and Kodi media player. (Works via a script in Kodi.) Probably the handiest is using an ultrasonic distance sensor
Read the rest
as a presence sensor to tell the computer when I’m in front of it or not[5]. If music is playing when I walk away from the computer, it pauses then resumes when I come back. Also wakes sleeping screens when I return. Just recently I wrote a little script that displays the number of minutes I've been sitting at the computer in the corner of the screen. At thirty minutes it turns from green to red and plays, "Move it! Move it!" sound, which it'll keep doing every five minutes until I get up and leave the computer for a little bit. (Although I think I'm going to have to change the sound to something that doesn't startle the hell out of me every time.) Also have an analogue modem on the phone line that lets me initiate calls from my command line by just typing something like, "call dad" and it looks up contact information in my centralised contacts list. It also cross-references incoming caller ID info with the contact list and displays caller info on my computer screen and the Kodi media player[6]. If I were to really get into more home automation in earnest, I think being able to control the curtains in the house would be ahead of controlling lights. Hate wandering around the house opening and closing them all. Two things I dislike about current trends in home automation are: 1) The requirement for an active Internet connection for a lot of your stuff to work. I want it self contained to the house and not sending information out into the world. 2) The need to have your phone near to you to use half the stuff. E.g., with the lounge room light switch mentioned above I can turn the light on or off at the switch (as well as the remote). I don't have to go find my phone and swipe back and forth five times just to toggle it. One concept I find very interesting from the late 90's was the adaptive house[7]. It would learn things like your hot water usage, preferred room temperature and ambient light levels and used neural network reinforcement learning to optimise. I wonder how far this could be taken now with advances in machine learning. [1] https://www.michevan.id.au/posts/garage-door-sensor/ [2] https://www.itead.cc/sonoff-touch.html [3] Aside: To my mind, in most cases it seems to make more sense to automate the switch, than automate the light bulb itself. Changing a light bulb doesn't need an electrician though, I guess. [4] https://github.com/arendst/Tasmota [5] https://www.michevan.id.au/posts/are-you-there/ [6] http://ncid.sourceforge.net/ [7] https://www.cs.colorado.edu/~mozer/index.php?dir=/Research/P...
In How I automate my home
Not sure it quite compares to the phone custom ROM community in size but there is an active community. I've reflashed cheap wifi IoT devices which otherwise wanted to phone home with Tasmota[0] which seems like a relatively active project. There are other similar efforts too. You could also consider eg home assistant, openhab or domoticz to form part of this type of community and they're very active. 0. https://github.com/arendst/Tasmota
In Samsung TVs May Upload Screenshots for Automatic Content Recognition
I found that home assistant does not appear to have native integration with Google home the last time I looked? I ended up using openhab which has native Google and Alexa integration, although I am not a fan of openhab as it feels ludicrously over-complicated for even the simplest of things. My lesson learnt after several years going through smartthings, home-brew stuff with raspberry pis, home assistant, demoticz, and openhab using ZigBee or zwave is to make sure your core infrastructure (i.e. things you want to control) is MQTT-based running over wi-fi/ethernet and all your plugs/lights/etc are independently controllable via sending raw MQTT commands on your home network. If you need to rely on a working internet connection, or too many third party things (e.g. IFTTT) you are going to have a bad time when things inevitably break/change
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/have an outage/become inexplicably slow/get shutdown etc. Once you standardise on MQTT you can switch out HA/OpenHab/others with minimal fuss, and you have great controll and backup options. WiFi just seems rock-solid Vs ZigBee or z-wave that just seemed so troublesome and unreliable. Tasmota (1) + mosquito running on a RPi has finally given me a reliable set up after years of struggling. It is some rock-solid MQTT compatible firmware for ESP8266 devices. 1 - https://github.com/arendst/Tasmota
In Open-Source Home Automation

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