Rheem EcoNet Integration maintained by Kris Linquist

klinquist · February 3, 2026, 4:11pm

Screen shot of mine.

Can you confirm that you don't have an API key set in the ESPHome config? Go into your HomeAssistant , ESPHome Builder, EDIT on the Rheem ESPHome, Your econet-hpwh.yaml should not have an api: section, it should only look like this:

substitutions:
  name: econet-hpwh
  friendly_name: Water Heater
packages:
  esphome-econet.esphome-econet: github://esphome-econet/esphome-econet/build-yaml/econet-hpwh-esp32.yaml@main
esphome:
  name: ${name}
  name_add_mac_suffix: false
  friendly_name: ${friendly_name}

wifi:
  ssid: !secret wifi_ssid
  password: !secret wifi_password

mluck · February 3, 2026, 4:17pm

Bingo that's the problem, thank you!!

I have an api: encryption key block in my espHome device in HA. I was always under the impression this was a requirement to integrate with HA, no?

I assume this is the conflict. HA is using encryption so Hubitat can't connect. Any idea how to remove the api: key from the device on the HA side so I can proceed with this.

Thanks again for the assist!

klinquist · February 4, 2026, 12:57am

You literally just remove that block.

Btw, I’m pretty sure I mentioned that you need to remove the api section in the original post about this Hubitat esphome integration

I should really split it into its own thread so that it’s easier to follow.

dstutz · February 4, 2026, 1:37pm

Yeah, a lot of people are confused with both here And since I'm wasting space with this message, just want to thank you again for the recent update to the ESPHome driver to capture more of the attributes, I'm graphing more info now.

klinquist · February 4, 2026, 1:56pm

btw, I just pushed an update to the rs485 driver to fix a bug, grab the latest

dstutz · February 4, 2026, 7:57pm

Thanks for the heads up. Been avoiding it, but took the opportunity to delete the "extra" copy of your library (I blindly followed your instructions to "import the library and driver" and didn't engage my brain to update the library I already had). PITA to change the driver to device, then delete the driver, then delete one of the copies, then import the driver (and ended up with 2 of those! LOL, then deleted one) then switched the device back, but everything looks good now.

Edit: is that the bug?

mluck · February 4, 2026, 8:33pm

Doh. Worked like a charm once I removed encryption from HA, thanks.

Unrelated, has anybody had any success in measuring (or even proxying) water consumption of these tanks? I don't believe the Rheem Econet tracks water flow, but I'd think you use energy consumption as a proxy for gallons used. And maybe triangulate with inferences from the drop in hot water availability percent. Appreciate any thoughts if folks have tried as I may dive into this hole soon

klinquist · February 4, 2026, 8:45pm

Looks like it

You only want to approximate hot water consumption?

mluck · February 4, 2026, 8:56pm

I'd prefer water consumption, not hot specifically.

klinquist · February 4, 2026, 9:10pm

Well monitoring hot water won't help a whole lot with that :).

mluck · February 4, 2026, 9:32pm

for sure. Just trying to understand how much of our water consumption passes through our two tanks. From what I've read, I think I can proxy water use from energy. Going to give it a shot and will share what I come up with.

dstutz · February 5, 2026, 12:33pm

I don't see this on mine, but I am still running OAB firmware:
econet-hpwh (esphome v2024.2.1). I guess I should re-flash my device to get that?

klinquist · February 5, 2026, 1:07pm

If you have it connected to HomeAssistant, you can upgrade it directly from HA.
..but I don't think that should be necessary to get that parameter, maybe it just hasn't changed? Try clicking the 'Refresh' button on the commands tab in Hubitat, then see if it comes in... It might only come in when it changes.

dstutz · February 5, 2026, 3:11pm

Don't have HA, just HE, so I disconnected it and flashed it from Edge and did wifi.

Went from this:

to this:

looks like hot water % still not there (this is not critical for me, just musing) but I seemed to have picked up a few more that weren't there before updating the esphome device:

Looks like it might be there in State Variables?

Also...looking at my logs, it appears it stopped communicating again yesterday for a bit until I started flashing it today;

If it matters, my WH is fairly old, I bought it in early 2018.

Since I'm piling on (sorry) Also seeing some warnings like this:
ESPHome received unhandled message type 133 with [1:[428570838], 2:[1111784622], 3:[1111723577], 4:[5], 7:[2143289344], 8:[2143289344]]