I have a little LCD screen wired up to a ESP32 on my desk. It tells me the temperature/humidity inside and outside the house. It is relatively useful but I wanted to do a bit more with it.

The text is controlled on the device itself. I wanted the ability to override the message remotely somehow.

My little temperature indicator

HASS has the ability to create Helpers, which are like virtual devices, of many kinds. They can be created in the “Devices and services” section in the Settings.

There is a Text component helper, which can contain a string in its state, that I added to control the LCD remotely. That is how it looks when it is visible on the main HASS dashboard.

Helpers in Dashboard

The ESP32 is running ESPHome, which is quite an amazing little utility. ESPHome has done all the heavy-lifting already when it comes to write microcontroller code, and it integrates with HASS already. You just need to add a bit of YAML to represent your program and push it to the device.

I have added the text_sensor piece, connected to the helper, and an extra if statement in the lambda function to conditionally display it.

esphome:
  name: esp32-1
  platform: ESP32
  board: esp-wrover-kit

# Enable Home Assistant API
api:

wifi:
  ssid: "yourwifi"
  password: "yourpassword"

sensor:
  - platform: homeassistant
    id: outside_temp
    entity_id: weather.home
    attribute: temperature
  - platform: homeassistant
    id: outside_humidity
    entity_id: weather.home
    attribute: humidity
  - platform: dht
    pin: GPIO26
    temperature:
      name: "Room Temperature"
      id: inside_temp
    humidity:
      name: "Room Humidity"
      id: inside_humidity
    update_interval: 60s

text_sensor:
  - platform: homeassistant
    id: lcd_display_computer
    entity_id: input_text.lcd_display_desktop

i2c:
  sda: 21
  scl: 22

display:
  - platform: lcd_pcf8574
    dimensions: 16x2
    address: 0x27
    lambda: |-
      if (strcmp(id(lcd_display_computer).state.c_str(), "")) {
        it.printf(0, 0, "%s", id(lcd_display_computer).state.c_str());
      } else {
        it.printf(0, 0, "Out: %.1f / %g", id(outside_temp).state, id(outside_humidity).state);
        it.printf(0, 1, "In : %.1f / %g", id(inside_temp).state, id(inside_humidity).state);
      }

Here’s how it looks with a string:

String override