How do I take control of the HA Voice PE?

[chilly palm]

Simple question, but surprisingly difficult to find an answer. I want to take control of my Home Assistant voice PE, which I believe you're supposed to do through the ESPHome Builder. No matter the amount of factory resets and connections, I am not being offered the chance to take control of it

It is my understanding that I could install the source code directly via yaml from here: https://github.com/esphome/home-assistant-voice-pe But which file would I use and is this even the correct way?

Thanks!

[atomic hare]

lets start with... why do you want to do this?

[chilly palm]

The missus wants the timers to be shown on the actual home assistant dashboard, I said I'd look into it and found this https://github.com/eyalgal/simple-timer-card/blob/main/voice-pe.md

Which I understand requires me to append the .yaml

If there's a more sane way to get the timers, that'd be great too!

[atomic hare]

right I gotcha, timers in HA is something that is on the "would be nice" list but its not yet been decided how to do it in a way that's acceptable. so workaround like this become a thing. just be aware this may cause other issues and depending on how maintained the work around project you may have to revert at some point.

is the VPE connected to the network?
what do you see in the ESPHome builder tool? (screenshot perhaps?)
are you using haos and the esphome builder addon or are you using a standalone container of it?

[chilly palm]

Thanks! Yeah I understand that features like these can take a lot of planning to get right! I'd be happy to get it working for now and if it breaks down the line, then so be it. That's an issue for future me

a) The VPE is connected to my network over wifi, I can see the IP. It has been currently setup the normal way to get it back to working order.
b) I have attached a screenshot in of the EspHome, but there's not much to show. The device fails to show up here no matter what I do regardless if I click Show/Hide discoverd devices
c) I am running a HAOS VM with the ESP Home Device Builder addon.

[atomic hare]

interesting. do you have any special network stuff? e.g. vlans etc...

also can you comfirm the version of the esphome device builder addon is installed?

[chilly palm]

Yeah, I do have separate VLANs for IoT stuff (including the VPE), but I don't recall having issues with other devices. Current Versopom os 2025.11.3

[atomic hare]

I am not sure how the builder tool does discovery but my guess is that whatever method it is doesn't work across vlans.

[chilly palm]

Alright, I will see if connecting it to the main VLAN will have an effect!

...Yeah

That was the issue

[atomic hare]

cool, i imagine it probably uses mdns

[chilly palm]

Well, good to know for future reference!

Thank you so much for your help :)

[atomic hare]

no worries. good luck with your firmware modifying adventures 🙂