Build your Home Assistant dashboard

Build a dashboard for motion, movement history, and sensor controls. Optionally, add the traffic generator app to send traffic to your sensors from Home Assistant.

Before you start

• Your ESPectre device is in Home Assistant through ESPHome or MQTT (Native firmware). Micro-ESPectre does not work with Home Assistant.
• The device appears under Settings → Devices & services, and its Motion Detected and Movement Score entities show values.
• You are a Home Assistant administrator, which is needed to create dashboards.

Step 1 — Find your entity IDs

The dashboard template starts from entity IDs with the prefix espectre_. Official ESPHome images add the last three MAC bytes, so that prefix becomes espectre_a1b2c3_ and every espectre_ in the template has to change. A custom or older ESPHome device still named espectre can keep the template as it is. With MQTT, Home Assistant creates each entity ID the first time it sees the entity, and keeps any later renames; see Naming of MQTT entities.

1. Open the entity list

   Go to Settings → Devices & services → Entities, then filter for your ESPectre device.

2. Identify the active entities

   Open Movement Score, check that it belongs to the right device and shows a value, and copy its full entity ID.

3. Check whether one prefix is enough

   If the ID ends in movement_score, the part before it is the prefix for the whole template. If it ends in something like movement_score_2, you have to check and replace each entity ID on the dashboard one by one.

These are only examples: the chip, device ID, device name, renames, and older entities all change the final ID, so always copy it from Home Assistant. If you see both an entity and an _2 copy, Home Assistant has two entities that wanted the same ID. The suffix is not part of the prefix and can differ between entities; use only the entities of the device that is online now.

Step 2 — Create an empty dashboard

1. Add the dashboard

   Go to Settings → Dashboards, select Add dashboard, and choose New dashboard from scratch.

2. Name it

   Use a name such as ESPectre, choose whether to show it in the sidebar, and select Create.

3. Take control

   Open the new dashboard and select the edit button. If Home Assistant asks, use the three-dot menu to take control. The template uses the Sections view.

See also Home Assistant's dashboard guide and Sections view reference.

Step 3 — Paste the template

1. Copy the YAML

   Open the ESPectre dashboard template, select Raw, and copy all of it.

2. Open the raw editor

   In the dashboard editor, open the three-dot menu, select Raw configuration editor, replace everything with the copied YAML, and save.

3. Replace the prefix

   If your prefix from Step 1 is not espectre_, replace every espectre_ with it, and save again.

4. Fix numbered IDs

   If an entity ends in _2 or another number, replace its full ID on its dashboard row. Do not add the number to the prefix.

Step 4 — Verify the result

The first column shows motion, a Movement Score bar, and the last 30 minutes of movement against the threshold. The second column has the detection controls and the most useful diagnostics for installation.

• Move in the room: Motion should change and Movement Score should update.
• The Threshold line should appear in the graph once the device has sent its value.
• Select Refresh Diagnostics to fill in Generator Rate, Traffic TX Rate, Traffic RX Rate, CSI Admitted Rate, WiFi RSSI, and WiFi Channel. They update only when you ask.
• Press Recalibrate only when the room can stay still. Calibration Active stays on while Lightweight calibration is running.

Optional — Run the traffic generator app

The ESPectre Traffic Generator is a Home Assistant app (formerly called an add-on) that sends a steady stream of packets from Home Assistant to your sensors. In external mode, several sensors share one multicast stream instead of each sending its own requests to the router. Its sidebar panel switches ESPHome and Native MQTT devices between their own (internal) traffic and this external traffic. You don't need the dashboard above to use it.

You need 64-bit Home Assistant OS (aarch64 or amd64), an administrator account, Internet access for the installation, and ESPectre 3.0 firmware (prereleases included). Home Assistant must reach the devices on UDP port 5555. Container, Core, Supervised, and 32-bit installations are not supported.

Install and start the app

1. Add the repository

   Open Settings → Apps → Install app, then select ⋮ → Repositories. Add https://github.com/francescopace/espectre and close the dialog.

2. Install ESPectre Traffic Generator

   Search for the app and select Install. If it does not appear, select ⋮ → Check for updates. The first installation can take a few minutes.

3. Start it with the defaults

   Check Configuration against the settings below. On Info, enable Start on boot and Watchdog, and select Start. Enable Show in sidebar, or select Open Web UI.

Check the traffic settings

For a first test, keep Target addresses at 239.255.0.1, the UDP port at 5555, and the rate at 100 packets per second per target. Leave Source IPv4 address empty. The address, port, and rate must match the devices' external traffic settings; the app does not change them.

If multicast does not reach your sensors, list their IPv4 addresses instead, and reserve those addresses in your router. Never send to a sensor both by multicast and by its IP, or from two generators at once. Save and restart the app after changing options.

Switch devices to external traffic

1. Find your devices

   Open ESPectre Traffic. The panel lists the devices already in Home Assistant through ESPHome or MQTT. If a device or its controls are missing, check the integration and enable its traffic entities under Settings → Devices & services → Entities.

2. Select External

   Select External on a device, or select several devices and use the button above the table, then confirm. External mode survives restarts; Internal switches the device back to its own traffic.

3. Verify reception and sensing

   Check RX / s, CSI / s, and Occupancy; the panel refreshes them while it is open. Generator / s is zero in external mode, and TX / s and RX / s count all the device's network traffic. Occupancy here means how much valid CSI the detector receives. Wait until calibration is done, in the device's entities or Live motion, then walk through the room and check Motion Detected.

Troubleshooting