MelFlashing custom firmware on my cats water fountain entirely for me tbh.
Micah Ilbery ☕️@oopsallnaps ooh, petlibro? I’ve been meaning to try flashing my cat’s feeder and water bowl.
@oopsallnaps I want the totally local home assistant control but my cat doesn’t understand why that matters. He only cares if his dinner is late because I’m fucking with his bowl. And there will be hell to pay if that should be the case. 
@micahilbery it was really easy! I used https://github.com/taylorfinnell/petlibro-esphome and no soldering was required to flash.
I had some issues getting the esphome config working but then figured out it was getting stuck on boot when i had the usb serial device pins in. So took that off, reset power and bam.
@micahilbery for flashing I used this guy and some pins from my toolkit. Hardest part was bridging two connections to enter programming mode.
https://www.amazon.ca/gp/aw/d/B07WX2DSVB
It seems like only one gen of these devices used the esphome chips though, so might want to double check product ids
@oopsallnaps I’m glad to hear it was easy enough. I bought my feeder and bowl because they were mentioned in the repo as flashable and have had them like a year without having done it yet 😅
Hearing that it was easy enough helps lower that anxiety and boosts that motivation.
@micahilbery Oh and one last thing, just make sure you're careful opening the base station for the fountain.
It's a little hard to pry off, but it also has a cable attaching both sides, so if you're not at least a little careful you might rip that thing right off.
But at least it's not a ribbon cable so it should be fineee.