HowTo: ESPEasy - Set up password protection, save and restore configurations - Nerdiy.de - Nerdy DIY HowTo's about electronic, 3D-printing and more.

I'm not sure whether ESPs can really be abused to set up a botnet. Either way, you shouldn't neglect the issue of security, even with the small ESPEasy devices.

The first small hurdle that should make it difficult for potential attackers or simply curious visitors to read or even change the configuration of your ESPEasy devices is password protection.

As soon as this is set up, you can only access the web interface with the appropriate password and use it to change the configuration. How you can set up this password is described in the following article.

Since you can also exclude yourself from accessing your ESPEasy device in this way, it also describes how you can back up and restore the configuration of your ESPEasy device.

Safety instructions

I know the following hints are always a bit annoying and seem unnecessary. But unfortunately, many people who knew it "better" from carelessness lost their eyes, fingers or other things or hurt themselves. In comparison, a loss of data is almost not worth mentioning, but even these can be really annoying. Therefore, please take five minutes to read the safety instructions. Even the coolest project is worth no injury or other annoyance. https://www.nerdiy.de/en/sicherheitshinweise/

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Requirements

Helpful Articles:
You can find additional tips on ESPEasy in the following articles.

Required tools:

Required material:

Set up the password protection for the web interface

So that the access password to the ESPEasy web interface can be configured, the ESPEasy firmware should already be installed and accessible on the ESP8266 or ESP32. You can find information on this in the article ESPEasy - Compiling, flashing and configuring WLAN access data.

Then open the configuration website of your ESP8266 programmed with ESPEasy by entering its IP address in your web browser. Information on how you can find out the IP address is also summarized in the article Show / find out the IP address of the devices in the network.

Then click on the "Config" tab to switch to it.

Now switch to the “Admin Password” section.

You can now enter a password in the associated text field, which you have to enter the next time you access the web configuration in order to open the page.

Then scroll to the bottom of the config page and save the new settings by clicking on "Submit".

After reloading the page at the latest, the browser will ask you to enter your username and password.

Then enter the (fixed) username "Admin" and the password you previously specified.

If you forget this password you can change it via the serial interface. Alternatively, you can reset ESPEasy to the factory settings. Unfortunately all other settings are lost as a result.

Save configuration

The settings of your ESPEasy can be saved and downloaded in a backup file. This has the advantage that you can easily transfer the settings you have made to another ESPEasy device or save them for later restoration.

Then click on the "Tools" tab to switch there.

Then scroll down a little further and click on the "Save" button.

This starts a download of a file that begins with "config _...".

The downloaded file then contains all general settings for the configuration of your ESPEasy device.

Important: This file does not contain any Wifi access data.

Restore configuration

As described in the previous step, the configuration of your ESPEasy device can be saved in a file. To transfer this file and the configuration it contains to an ESPEasy device, you can import it using the web interface.

Then click on the "Tools" tab to switch there.

Then scroll down a little further and click on the "Load" button.

You will then be redirected to a page where you can start a file selection menu.

Open this by clicking on "Select file".

Then navigate to the backup file whose settings you want to import.

Select the relevant file and then click on "Open".

In the last step you have to load the selected file onto your ESPEasy device.

To do this, click on "Upload".

The file is then uploaded to your ESPEasy device and the settings it contains are imported.

If this was successful, you will also be shown a corresponding message.

Have fun with the project

I hope everything worked as described. If not or you have any other questions or suggestions, please let me know in the comments. Also, ideas for new projects are always welcome. 🙂

P.S. Many of these projects - especially the hardware projects - cost a lot of time and money. Of course I do this because I enjoy it, but if you appreciate that I share this information with you, I would be happy about a small donation to the coffee box. 🙂