Today we’ll walk through how to convert a Petlibro Air WiFi Feeder to ESPHome, including how to access the ESP32 board, wire it for flashing, enter bootloader mode, back up the factory firmware, flash ESPHome correctly, and add the feeder to Home Assistant.

What is ESPHome?

ESPHome is an open-source project for creating firmware using simple YAML configurations instead of writing embedded code from scratch. It most commonly works with ESP32 and ESP8266 microcontrollers. I have never written firmware and hadn’t even heard of ESPHome before starting this project, but it was extremely beginner-friendly.

Why ESPHome?

The Petlibro PLAF108 is already a WiFi feeder, but the stock firmware is designed around Petlibro’s ecosystem. This means that using the pet feeder requires installing Petlibro’s app, having a Petlibro account, and maintaining internet access to reach Petlibro’s servers. Flashing ESPHome moves the device into a local Home Assistant setup and gives you direct control over the hardware that is already inside the feeder.

For me, the main benefits are:

Local Home Assistant integration instead of relying on the stock app for day-to-day control
Direct visibility into feeder sensors, such as wall power, battery connection, food at the chute, and motor rotation
More flexible automations for feeding, notifications, lights, and diagnostics
Local over-the-air (OTA) firmware updates after the initial flash
The ability to rename and model entities based on what the hardware actually does
A better understanding of the feeder’s behavior and failure modes

This approach makes sense if:

You are comfortable opening the feeder and working with low-voltage electronics
You want local control through Home Assistant
You are willing to lose stock cloud/app behavior unless you restore the factory firmware
You can make and safely store a factory firmware backup before flashing anything
You are willing to try these steps out on your own hardware, even if it causes problems

This is not the right project for you if:

you need the feeder to keep working with the Petlibro app
you are not comfortable with serial flashing (or interested in trying it)
you do not want to risk causing issues with your hardware

Safety Notes

Before getting started, there are a few important warnings:

Disconnect power before opening the feeder, moving cables, or changing wiring. This means disconnecting the wall power and the battery (once you have the feeder open).
Use a regulated 3.3V supply if you power the ESP board directly. Do not feed 5V into the ESP board’s 3.3V rail.
Do not connect multiple power sources to the board unless you know they are safe to connect together.
Keep the USB-to-TTL adapter ground connected to the feeder board ground.
Do not connect the USB-to-TTL adapter’s 5V pin to the feeder board.
Back up the factory firmware before flashing ESPHome.
Do not publish your factory firmware dump. It may contain device-specific secrets, cloud credentials, certificates, or other private data.
Be careful with motor GPIOs. A bad configuration or exposed web server could damage the feeder motor.
These instructions are for the Petlibro PLAF108 hardware I have specifically. Your board revision may differ.

Prerequisites

You will likely need:

Petlibro Air WiFi Feeder (model PLAF108)
USB-to-TTL serial adapter
- I used this CH340 adapter.
Jumper wires or test leads
- I used three female-to-male and one male-to-male jumper wires.
A machine capable of running Python tools (I used Ubuntu 24 LTS)
- Python 3
- esptool
- esphome
  - I used ESPHome version 2025.2.2 , but a newer version with potentially different behavior may be available in the future. If anything in this guide conflicts with ESPHome’s official documentation, follow the instructions in ESPHome.
Home Assistant (or similar hub) with the ESPHome integration
External regulated 3.3V power supply
- This may not be necessary depending on whether your feeder board receives power properly

These are not strictly required, but are very helpful:

Multimeter with DC voltage and continuity modes
A way to take clear photos of the board before disconnecting anything
Labels or tape for marking cables
Fine tweezers for disconnecting cables

Disassemble the Feeder

Before we can flash new firmware onto the device, we need to disassemble the feeder enough to access the control board. I’d recommend removing the food bowl and all food from the feeder at this point.

Unclip and remove the cylindrical top shell from the feeder. Inside, there’s a clear plate that the food sits on:

Rotate the clear plate in the unlock direction (marked on the plate) and carefully lift it out:

Next, there are four screws on the bottom of the feeder that need to be removed. Flip the feeder over to access these screws. You do not need to remove any rubber feet or covering to access the screws.

Your feeder dimensions may bary, but I needed a screwdriver with a thin, Philips-head shaft that was just over 10 cm long. Be aware that the screws in my pet feeder were quite soft, so be careful not to strip them. I’d recommend putting these screws in a labelled bag or bowl until it’s time for reassembly.

Next, carefully lift off the bottom cover. You should see something that looks like this:

There is a small board visible now:

This board does include the connection for the battery. I’d recommend unplugging the 2-pin battery connector now (the device can still be powered if plugged into the wall):

Unfortunately, this is not the board we are looking for. Follow the wires from the 8-pin connector to the top of the feeder:

The wires go behind the food chute, so I removed two screws holding it in place:

Then carefully pulled off the plastic food chute:

Next, there are six plastic clips holding the panel in place. Carefully unclip these clips without damaging them. I found it easiest to use tweezers to unclip both clips on the left side (further from the wires) first.

Pull this panel away from the top shell of the feeder:

I’d recommend confirming that your pet feeder has an ESP32 chip before proceeding any further. The chip in my feeder specifically is an Espressif ESP32-C3-WROOM-02.

Directly underneath that chip are the VCC, RX, TX, and GND pads that we’ll be using in the next step. There are also two unlabelled pads (directly to the left of GND in the previous image) that will be used for entering programming mode during boot-up.

Wire the Serial Adapter

Now, we’re ready to connect the pet feeder board to the computer using the USB-to-TTL adapter. If your adapter has a bridging pin to select between 5V and 3.3V, ensure it is set to 3.3V. Exact instructions depend on your adapter, but I connected:

Wire	USB-to-TTL adapter pin	Feeder board pad
Black female to male	GND	GND
Blue female-to-male	TXD	RX
White female-to-male	RXD	TX
Brown male-to-male	None	unlabelled pads

Note: The serial TX/RX lines are crossed: the adapter’s TXD pin goes to RX on the board, and the adapter RXD pin connects to TX on the board.

The wiring at this point is:

USB-TTL GND       -> feeder GND
USB-TTL TXD       -> feeder RX
USB-TTL RXD       -> feeder TX
unlabelled pad    -> other unlabeled pad
8-pin cable       -> connected
wall adapter      -> disconnected (until power-on)
battery           -> disconnected, if accessible

If your device is hooked up properly, you should be able to check for the serial device by running:

ls /dev/ttyUSB*

You should see a response containing dev/ttyUSB0. If you have a result like dev/ttyUSB1, then use that identifier for the commands in the rest of this guide.

If you do not receive a response:

Check the wiring and contacts between the serial adapter, the feeder board, and your computer
Check the adapter works properly with a loopback test
If you’re using a CH340 on Linux, check if the device is being captured by brltty. I discovered this by running dmesg -w while plugging in the serial adapter to my laptop.

The wiring is now hooked up properly, and we’re ready to back up and flash the firmware.

Install ESPHome and esptool

Now that the hardware is ready, we can set up the required software. Create a working directory wherever you would like:

mkdir -p ~/Downloads/plaf108
cd ~/Downloads/plaf108

Install the tools using your preferred Python environment. One simple option is:

python3 -m pip install --user esphome esptool

Verify that both tools are available:

python3 -m esptool version
python3 -m esphome version

If your system has multiple Python environments, make sure you use the same one consistently.

Power On in Bootloader Mode

Next, we can enter bootloader mode by powering on the feeder while the two unmarked boot pads are bridged (with the brown male-to-male wire connected earlier). Once the device is powered on, you can either remove the wire bridging the two pads or leave it in place. I didn’t have any issues with leaving that wire in place during the entire flashing process. The important part is that the unmarked pads are bridged during startup to ensure bootloader mode is entered correctly.

Before powering on, you can run this to check that the adapter is connected to the feeder board properly:

python3 -m serial.tools.miniterm /dev/ttyUSB0 115200

Once the board is powered on, if it entered the bootloader mode correctly, then the output should look something like this:

--- Miniterm on /dev/ttyUSB0  115200,8,N,1 ---
--- Quit: Ctrl+] | Menu: Ctrl+T | Help: Ctrl+T followed by Ctrl+H ---
ESP-ROM:esp32c3-api1-20210207
Build:Feb  7 2021
rst:0x1 (POWERON),boot:0x5 (DOWNLOAD(USB/UART0/1))
waiting for download

If you see normal factory firmware logs instead, the boot pads were not bridged correctly or were not held at the right time during power-on. Here are what the normal factory firmware logs looked like for me:

--- Miniterm on /dev/ttyUSB0  115200,8,N,1 ---
--- Quit: Ctrl+] | Menu: Ctrl+T | Help: Ctrl+T followed by Ctrl+H ---
ESP-ROM:esp32c3-api1-20210207
Build:Feb  7 2021
rst:0x1 (POWERON),boot:0xd (SPI_FAST_FLASH_BOOT)
SPIWP:0xee
mode:DIO, clock div:2
load:0x3fcd6100,len:0x38c
load:0x403ce000,len:0x6ac
load:0x403d0000,len:0x24e4
entry 0x403ce000

Once you see the waiting for download response, you’re ready to move on to the next step. Ensure you exit the tool with CTRL+] first.

Confirm esptool Communication

With the board in bootloader mode, run:

python3 -m esptool --port /dev/ttyUSB0 chip_id

A successful result should identify an ESP32-C3 and print the chip information and MAC address:

esptool.py v4.7.0
Serial port /dev/ttyUSB0
Connecting....
Detecting chip type... ESP32-C3
Chip is ESP32-C3 (QFN32) (revision v0.4)
Features: WiFi, BLE
Crystal is 40MHz
MAC:

If the board prints SPI_DOWNLOAD_BOOT but esptool fails with this message:

Failed to connect to ESP32-C3: No serial data received

then the computer is sending sync packets but not receiving valid responses from the bootloader. You should check all wiring is making proper contact with the pads and ensure you have the proper type of USB-to-Serial adapter.

A Note about Power Source

I continually got the above No serial data received message and eventually tracked it down to an issue with the power source. Ideally, you can power on your feeder in bootloader mode by simply plugging in the wall adapter.

Unfortunately, that did not work for me. For some reason, while powering the board from the wall adapter, the chip was at 3.8V instead of at 3.3V. I tried a few fixes, but ultimately the only thing that worked was powering the feeder board directly from external 3.3V power supply while the feeder’s internal 8-pin cable, wall adapter, and battery were disconnected.

Note: When I flash the other pet feeder, I will check if the adapter can supply enough power if the feeder’s VCC pad is wired to the adapter’s 3.3V pin. If that works, it would eliminate the need for an external power supply.

The wiring with an external power supply looked like this:

External 3.3V +   -> feeder VCC
External GND      -> feeder GND
USB-TTL GND       -> feeder GND
USB-TTL TXD       -> feeder RX
USB-TTL RXD       -> feeder TX
unlabelled pad    -> other unlabelled pad
8-pin cable       -> disconnected
wall adapter      -> disconnected 
battery           -> disconnected

Ensure you do not connect the USB-to-TTL adapter’s 5V pin to anything. Your adapter should be set to 3.3V, not 5V. If you use an external 3.3V power supply, do not connect the USB-to-TTL adapter to the feeder’s VCC pad.

Once you’ve successfully confirmed esptool can communicate with the board, you’re ready to back up the factory firmware.

Back Up the Factory Firmware

Before flashing ESPHome, it’s recommended to back up the factory firmware. This ensures that if anything goes wrong with the ESPHome firmware (or you decide to reset it to the stock firmware in the future), then you have a backup to restore from.

You can name the backup file anything you want, but I went with petlibro_factory_dump.bin:

python3 -m esptool --chip esp32c3 --port /dev/ttyUSB0 read_flash 0x0 0x400000 petlibro_factory_dump.bin

Creating the backup on my device took about 7 minutes and I left the unlabeled pads bridged the entire time. If it works successfully, you should see an output that looks like this:

esptool.py v4.7.0
Serial port /dev/ttyUSB0
Connecting....
Chip is ESP32-C3 (QFN32) (revision v0.4)
Features: WiFi, BLE
Crystal is 40MHz
MAC: [REDACTED]
Uploading stub...
Running stub...
Stub running...
4194304 (100 %)
4194304 (100 %)
Read 4194304 bytes at 0x00000000 in 380.0 seconds (88.3 kbit/s)...
Staying in bootloader.

Verify the backup file actually exists on your disk and is around 4 MB.

Note: Keep this file private. Do not upload it to GitHub, issue trackers, forums, or public chats.

Create the ESPHome Configuration

There are a lot of configuration options for ESPHome, but I’d recommend starting with the configuration files in pineconedata/esphome-petlibro-plaf108 or taylorfinnell/petlibro-esphome.

You need to replace the placeholder WiFi ssid and password information with your own. You can do this by editing plaf108.yaml directly:

wifi:
  ssid: "YOUR_WIFI_NETWORK_NAME"
  password: "YOUR_WIFI_NETWORK_PASSWORD"

Or you can store your credentials in a separate secrets.yaml file. In that case, edit plaf108.yaml to include:

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

And then create a separate secrets.yaml file (in the same directory) that contains:

wifi_ssid: "YOUR_WIFI_NETWORK_NAME"
wifi_password: "YOUR_WIFI_NETWORK_PASSWORD"

You can also make any other configuration changes that you’d like at this time, but the WiFi credentials are the only necessary edit. You will be able to update the firmware over-the-air (without disassembling it) after ESPHome is flashed to the device.

Compile the Firmware

From the directory containing plaf108.yaml (and secrets.yaml, if you’re using it), run:

python3 -m esphome compile plaf108.yaml

A successful compilation should take just over a minute and have an output like:

INFO ESPHome 2025.2.2
INFO Reading configuration plaf108.yaml...
WARNING GPIO2 is a strapping PIN and should only be used for I/O with care.
Attaching external pullup/down resistors to strapping pins can cause unexpected failures.
See https://esphome.io/guides/faq.html#why-am-i-getting-a-warning-about-strapping-pins
WARNING GPIO8 is a strapping PIN and should only be used for I/O with care.
Attaching external pullup/down resistors to strapping pins can cause unexpected failures.
See https://esphome.io/guides/faq.html#why-am-i-getting-a-warning-about-strapping-pins
WARNING GPIO9 is a strapping PIN and should only be used for I/O with care.
Attaching external pullup/down resistors to strapping pins can cause unexpected failures.
See https://esphome.io/guides/faq.html#why-am-i-getting-a-warning-about-strapping-pins
INFO Generating C++ source...
INFO Core config, version or integrations changed, cleaning build files...
INFO Compiling app...
********************************************************************************
If you like PlatformIO, please:
- star it on GitHub > https://github.com/platformio/platformio-core
- follow us on LinkedIn to stay up-to-date on the latest project news > https://www.linkedin.com/company/platformio/
- try PlatformIO IDE for embedded development > https://platformio.org/platformio-ide
********************************************************************************

Processing plaf108-a (board: esp32-c3-devkitm-1; framework: arduino; platform: platformio/espressif32@5.4.0)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Platform Manager: Installing platformio/espressif32 @ 5.4.0
INFO Installing platformio/espressif32 @ 5.4.0
Downloading  [####################################]  100%
Unpacking  [####################################]  100%
Platform Manager: espressif32@5.4.0 has been installed!

...
Additional downloading, unpacking, and compiling lines...
...

Building .pioenvs/plaf108-a/firmware.bin
Creating esp32c3 image...
Successfully created esp32c3 image.
esp32_create_combined_bin([".pioenvs/plaf108-a/firmware.bin"], [".pioenvs/plaf108-a/firmware.elf"])
Wrote 0xe1530 bytes to file /home/user/Downloads/plaf108/.esphome/build/plaf108-a/.pioenvs/plaf108-a/firmware.factory.bin, ready to flash to offset 0x0
esp32_copy_ota_bin([".pioenvs/plaf108-a/firmware.bin"], [".pioenvs/plaf108-a/firmware.elf"])
======================================================== [SUCCESS] Took 86.34 seconds ========================================================

If there are any YAML or compile errors, fix those before flashing. Once your firmware is successfully compiled, you can flash it to the device.

Flash ESPHome

Note: This step actually replaces the firmware on the device. Once you run the commands in this section, your device will no longer work with Petlibro’s app and will instead be using ESPHome. Double-check that the factory firmware is safely backed up and that you are ready to proceed.

To flash ESPHome to the device, run (from the folder containing your plaf108.yaml file, or provide the full filepath):

python3 -m esphome upload plaf108.yaml --device /dev/ttyUSB0

During a successful upload, the logs should show several segments, including:

bootloader at 0x00000000
partition table at 0x00008000
OTA data at 0x0000e000
application at 0x00010000

Once you receive those messages, your pet feeder’s firmware has been replaced!

Reconnect the Feeder and Boot Normally

After ESPHome is flashed successfully, power off the device by unplugging the wall adapter or powering off the external power supply. You can unplug the USB-to-TTL adapter and disconnect all wires from the feeder board.

I would recommend testing that the device boots properly before fully reassembling it. You can power on the device by plugging in the wall adapter (and reconnecting the internal 8-pin cable if you previously unplugged it).

If you entered WiFi credentials in the plaf108.yaml or secrets.yaml files, then the device should automatically join your WiFi network. You can confirm that it is reachable by pinging the device name (or using the IP address assigned by your router):

ping plaf108-a.local

If the device is online, you should see results like this:

bytes from plaf108-a (IP_ADDRESS): icmp_seq=1 ttl=254 time=93.1 ms
bytes from plaf108-a (IP_ADDRESS): icmp_seq=2 ttl=254 time=231 ms
bytes from plaf108-a (IP_ADDRESS): icmp_seq=3 ttl=254 time=36.0 ms

If that works, you can reassemble the device and start configuring it in Home Assistant! To reassemble it, reverse the disassembly process:

Remove all power sources from the device (wall adapter, battery, external power supply)
Ensure all jumper wires and the adapter are unplugged
Reconnect the 8-pin cable, if previously disconnected
Reconnect the 2-pin battery cable
Clip the feeder board back into the top shell
Place the food chute (carefully not crushing or catching any wires) and screw it in place
Slide the shell with the food chute back over the base of the feeder
Reattach the clear food plate (aligning the central gear with the motor shaft)
Slide on and clip down the upper cylindrical food-containment shell
Attach the food hopper and dish
Refill with food and replace the button-lid
Connect to wall power

Add the Feeder to Home Assistant

In Home Assistant, ensure you have the official ESPHome integration. You can add it with:

Settings -> Devices & services -> Add integration -> ESPHome

Once you have ESPHome, you can add the device specifically with:

Settings -> Devices & services -> Devices -> Add Device -> ESPHome

You should see a screen like this (the Host field will likely be empty):

Screenshot from 2026-06-17 00-23-46.png

Enter the feeder’s hostname or IP address into the Host field and click Submit.

Screenshot from 2026-06-17 00-38-05.png

If Home Assistant has any issues connecting to the device, check that your plaf108.yaml file contains the required api entry.

Once connected, Home Assistant should show the device’s status, sensors, and controls.

Wrapping Up

At this point, the firmware on the pet feeder has been replaced. It started as a perfectly usable WiFi feeder, but required Petlibro’s app, account system, and cloud services to operate. Flashing ESPHome lets you use the device entirely locally and use the native Home Assistant integration.

Now, all that’s left is configuration: deciding how to use the feeder’s sensors and controls, naming entities clearly, and building safe Home Assistant automations around the hardware. This guide was focused on the flashing process itself, but I’m planning to publish a future article around the Home Assistant configuration.

Flashing ESPHome on a WiFi Pet Feeder