ESPHome
ESPHome ships its first official product: a starter kit
On 12 August 2026 the ESPHome blog published the thing it teased in April at State of the Open Home: a first-party kit, designed and produced by Apollo Automation. The primary source is that post, not a shopping roundup.
ESPHome has been firmware. The Starter Kit is hardware with the project’s name on it. Apollo Automation — the Open Home Foundation’s second commercial partner — designed and produces it. The majority of profit from each kit goes to the Foundation.
The kit arrives as a snap-apart panel: an ESP32-C6 board plus four modules — motion, temperature and humidity, a button, and a notification board (buzzer plus ten RGB LEDs behind the ESPHome logo). Modules connect with flat ribbon cables. No soldering, no breadboard. USB-C power. It talks to Home Assistant, or runs as a standalone local device.
Configuration is the ESPHome Device Builder desktop app. YAML is still underneath. The Learning Wiki is the other half of the onboarding story.
That is the news: an official first-party kit, local firmware, a named manufacturing partner, and a Foundation funding path. Price and retailer lists belong to Apollo’s product page, not this brief.
Primary source: Get ready to start building: The ESPHome Starter Kit is here! — ESPHome, 12 Aug 2026. See also What the ESPHome Starter Kit actually is.