🤖 BOB by HomeVox

Bad Or Brilliant. Usually both.

Features   ·   Setup   ·   Home Assistant   ·   Print files

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BOB turns an M5Stack CoreS3 / CoreS3 Lite into a little desk companion. He looks around with big animated eyes, shows your Home Assistant notifications on his face and reacts when you touch him. Print his body on MakerWorld, flash the firmware, install the integration through HACS, and BOB becomes part of your smart home.

✨ Features

Feature	What it does
Expressive eyes	Moods, blinking, looking around, falling asleep and waking up
Notifications	Show text from any Home Assistant automation on his face
HACS integration	Native BOB entities: switches, numbers, buttons, a mood selector, text and sensors
Services	bob.send_text, bob.set_emotion, bob.run_action, bob.set_mode, bob.provision_ble_wifi
Easy setup	Wi-Fi and MQTT through a web page on your phone, or via Bluetooth from Home Assistant

🧰 What you need

• M5Stack CoreS3 or CoreS3 Lite
• Home Assistant with HACS
• An MQTT broker (for example the Mosquitto add-on)
• The printed enclosure from MakerWorld, 4 small round magnets and a USB-C cable

🔧 Installation

1. Install the integration (HACS)

1. Open HACS in Home Assistant.
2. Add the custom repository https://github.com/HomeVox/Bob with category Integration.
3. Install Bob and restart Home Assistant.
4. Add it under Settings → Devices & services → Add integration → Bob.

2. Flash the firmware

The firmware is in firmware/bob. In the Arduino IDE:

1. Add the board manager URL https://static-cdn.m5stack.com/resource/arduino/package_m5stack_index.json.
2. Install the M5Stack board package and select M5Stack-CoreS3. Do not use the M5AtomS3 profile.
3. Install the libraries M5Unified, M5GFX, PubSubClient and ArduinoJson.
4. Copy firmware/bob/config.example.h to firmware/bob/config.h (required). You can leave the placeholders: Wi-Fi and MQTT are set later on the setup page. config.h is ignored by git.
5. Open firmware/bob/bob.ino and upload.

3. Connect BOB

Without Wi-Fi details, BOB starts his own setup network:

1. Connect your phone or laptop to the Wi-Fi network Bob-Setup.
2. Open http://192.168.4.1/setup (http, not https).
3. Fill in your Wi-Fi and MQTT details and click Save and Connect.

Later you can open the same page at http://bob.local/setup or http://<bob-ip>/setup. Use the broker's IP address, port 1883, and a username and password your broker accepts.

Prefer Bluetooth? Use the service bob.provision_ble_wifi from Home Assistant. BOB advertises as Bob-Setup-BLE.

🏠 Home Assistant

The integration adds a BOB device with:

• Switches – Always awake, Auto brightness, Matrix, Clock and more
• Numbers – Brightness, Sleep timer, Proximity threshold
• Buttons – Wake, Sleep, Follow, Snapshot, Yes/No
• Select – Emotion
• Text – Notification
• Sensors – State, Behaviour, Touch, Movement, Proximity and more

All services are described in custom_components/bob/services.yaml.

🩺 Troubleshooting

• MQTT rc=5 – the broker rejected the username or password.
• Setup page does not open – make sure you are connected to Bob-Setup and use http://192.168.4.1/setup.
• No entities yet – restart Mosquitto and Home Assistant, then reload the Bob integration.

📁 Project files

• custom_components/bob/ – Home Assistant integration (HACS)
• firmware/bob/ – CoreS3 firmware
• docs/images/ – images for this README

📄 License

MIT – see LICENSE.

BOB by HomeVox. Bad or brilliant, but never boring.