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EspControl wall panels as kitchen controllers

EspControl is a no-code touch panel for cheap ESP32 touchscreens (4 to 10 inches, most under $50): flash it from a browser, join it to WiFi, add it to Home Assistant, and lay out buttons and readings from the screen's own setup page. Because it can show and press anything Home Assistant can see, it makes a great low-cost wall controller for Pantry Raider: start kitchen timers, flip the barcode scanner mode, ping the kitchen screen, and watch what is expiring, all from a panel by the stove.

EspControl is a separate project under the PolyForm Noncommercial license, so Pantry Raider does not bundle or ship any part of it. The connector is a plain Home Assistant package that turns Pantry Raider's actions and counts into ordinary Home Assistant scripts and sensors; EspControl then places those on a panel like anything else.

What you get on the panel

Buttons (Home Assistant scripts):

  • Kitchen timers: 5 min, 10 min, pasta, soft egg (same presets as the Timers page; they show up on every Pantry Raider surface and the Stream Deck)
  • Clear kitchen timers
  • Scanner: next mode (cycles inventory, consume, shopping, audit)
  • Ping the kitchen screen (an on-screen note on the Pantry Raider kiosk)

Readings (sensors):

  • Timers running, and the next timer's label and remaining time
  • Items expiring within the week
  • Items waiting in Review

Setup

  1. Get EspControl itself running first: flash a supported screen and add it to Home Assistant, following the EspControl documentation.
  2. Copy homeassistant/espcontrol.yaml from the Pantry Raider repository into your Home Assistant config as packages/pantry_raider_espcontrol.yaml. If you have never used packages, enable them once in configuration.yaml:
homeassistant:
  packages: !include_dir_named packages
  1. Edit the file: replace the example address with your Pantry Raider LAN address (the http://192.168.x.x:9284 one, never a public URL). If your install has a password, uncomment the headers: blocks and put the API key from Settings, Security into secrets.yaml as pantry_raider_api_key.
  2. Restart Home Assistant. The new script.pantry_raider_* buttons and sensor.pantry_raider_* readings appear as regular entities.
  3. Open the EspControl screen's setup page and drag those entities onto your layout.

Notes

  • The package is self-contained: it does not touch the sensors or automations from the main Home Assistant integration, so you can use either or both.
  • Timers started from the panel are real Pantry Raider timers: they ring on the kiosk, float on the screensaver, and show on the Stream Deck.
  • The panel polls counts gently (timers every 15 seconds, the rest every few minutes), so a small kitchen server never notices it.