ESPHome devices that remove encryption key become in a weird state

[balloob]

The problem

I had an ESP32 S3 Box with the voice assistant firmware. I had it adopted in the ESPHome dashboard, which added an encryption key, and it was configured in Home Assistant. The ESPHome dashboard is also integrated in Home Assistant.

I leveraged the new HTTP OTA update which removed the encryption key. Afterwards, my ESPHome config entry was in a weird state:

• The config entry set up successfully
• It logged the error

  The connection dropped immediately after encrypted hello; Try enabling encryption on the device or turning off encryption on the client (Home Assistant 2024.7.1).

• I was unable to remove encryption via options
• I was unable to set up the device again without removing the config entry (which would remove customizations)

I ended up emptying the encryption key in config/core.config_entries and the device appeared again.

If I had not been aware that the device got offline, I would not have noticed because the config entry set up successfully.

Since we wouldn't want to simply accept degraded encryption, I think a re-auth would make sense here.

What version of Home Assistant Core has the issue?

core-2024.7.1

What was the last working version of Home Assistant Core?

Don't know

What type of installation are you running?

Home Assistant OS

Integration causing the issue

ESPHome

Link to integration documentation on our website

https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/esphome

Diagnostics information

No response

Example YAML snippet

No response

Anything in the logs that might be useful for us?

No response

Additional information

No response

[home-assistant]

Hey there @OttoWinter, @jesserockz, @kbx81, @bdraco, mind taking a look at this issue as it has been labeled with an integration (esphome) you are listed as a code owner for? Thanks!

Code owner commands

Code owners of esphome can trigger bot actions by commenting:

• @home-assistant close Closes the issue.
• @home-assistant rename Awesome new title Renames the issue.
• @home-assistant reopen Reopen the issue.
• @home-assistant unassign esphome Removes the current integration label and assignees on the issue, add the integration domain after the command.
• @home-assistant add-label needs-more-information Add a label (needs-more-information, problem in dependency, problem in custom component) to the issue.
• @home-assistant remove-label needs-more-information Remove a label (needs-more-information, problem in dependency, problem in custom component) on the issue.

_{^{(message by CodeOwnersMention)}}

---

esphome documentation
esphome source
_{^{(message by IssueLinks)}}