I’ve been in the HA world since the time the government placed the world under house arrest. Since then I’ve seen all sorts of amazing things people can do with an esp32 device.
So I’m late to the game. I always thought it may become a dangerous rabbit hole so I’ve just avoided it. But apparently I have 4 coming today so it’s about time to ask you guys what you do.
My first project was gonna be getting some Bluetooth tracking going on around the house to get some room prescence going on.
I also read I can make some seat/bed sensors with a little wire, aluminium foil, paper and a folder-insert, that sounds like it could be fun.
I have a breadboard and a bunch of components I bought when I first got a Pi. I don’t know how compatible these components are with esp32s or what the hell I can do.
I don’t have a soldering iron (yet).
So basically: noob post, gimme some easy projects that don’t require a lot, or wow me with your esp projects.
ESPHome is amazing - there’s so much you can do without writing a single line of code.
I have built a few projects around the platform - a boiler monitor that tells me temperatures and state of zone valves, an energy monitoring system tracking electricity usage and solar export, and a hot tub mod that inhibits the heater to reduce grid import and maximize self consumption of solar. They have all been rock-solid stable.
Also bought an ESP and some components but haven’t yet done anything.
Just make sure you have a prototyping board.
I hate soldering, so I will only cross that road once I have a very solid project and idea.
Yeah I played a little with the breadboard when I first got the pi but didn’t do anything spectacular. I need to have a look but I feel like I may have a camera module in my bag of tricks so I guess I could theoretically knock up a camera doorbell or something with some tinkering.
Soldering looks like it’s a whole thing but I feel like if I bought an iron I’d get the hang of it really easily.
But then I feel like I’ll just be soldering everything and my family will get exasperated with me.
Learning to solder is incredibly helpful with getting your esphome devices off the desk and into real-world use.
Don’t cheap out on the iron, though. Hakko and Weller are the two brands I’m familiar with and “everyone” seem to trust. You don’t need to spend hundreds of dollars, but the quality gap between $30 and $60 is very obvious.
This is one of those instances where the idea of “a poor craftsman blames his tools” falls apart. I was using a crappy non-adjustable pen and could never achieve good, reliable results despite having proper technique. Then I got a decent Weller adjustable unit, and suddenly everything was “perfect”.
If you’re looking for additional toys, a 3D printer is insanely useful for creating bespoke cases for your projects ;)
If you’re looking for additional toys, a 3D printer is insanely useful for creating bespoke cases for your projects ;)
Oh look, the rabbit hole lol
I’ve had an Ender 3 in my cart for months and just can’t quiiite justify pulling that trigger. One of these days, tho… Any day now.
Don’t. Ender 3 is ancient garbage. I upgraded an ender 3 to a k1c and I’ll never go back. The only time I don’t get FLAWLESS prints is because the filament isn’t fast enough. I can print benchy in 30 minutes in the slow speed. And best of all I never have to fuck with it. Ever.
I just added two temperature probes to a esp32 using esphome in HA. It’s going to measure the temperatures in a still 🙂
I have two Digi WLED controllers a handful of project kits, myself.
The WLED boards drive some addressable LED strings in my living room and on my patio. They hardly count as “project” kits, but learning about interfacing TTL logic with the LED driver boards was a helpful experience. I learned a lot about the different GPIO uses and modes.
For the project kits I’ve built, I’ve been focused around presence and environment sensors. Using esphome I’ve successfully built PIR (AM312) + mmWave radar module (R60A) presence sensors, natural gas detectors for kitchen and basement utility areas, and a water leak sensor for the laundry area. I had goals of building a 5-in-1 presence sensor, but you can buy products for those now; its a solved problem.
I’ve been considering a design for a sump pit depth gauge because that sounds like useless information that I’d like to have for some reason.
I’ll probably get interested in energy management soon, and will look into current clamps and tracking usage at smart receptacles.
I’m planning to do a sump pump depth gauge too at some point as an emergency “pump is busted!” alarm - very interested if you don’t mind sharing your thoughts for that design.
My sump pit is pretty shallow, and is dry about half of the time. My challenge is that the sump is on a float switch which doesn’t activate until the water level is just about an inch (15mm) below the bottom of my slab. It doesn’t take much of a delay for it to overflow.
There are three sensor types I’m aware of: a resistive “dipstick,” ultrasonic distance gauge, and a bathymetric depth gauge.
The resistive dipsticks are only about 6in (15cm) in length, and would be good to determine if the water is within that distance of a target water line. I would position it on the side of the pit with the effective upper end set some buffer below the top surface of the slab floor, and possible gram the logic to alert when the water lever rises above the bottom of the slab. I would otherwise be blind to the water level if it is below Tue bottom of to sensor.
The ultrasonic sensor looked interesting, but I have pets and I try to avoid ultrasonics in the environment when I can. It also strikes me as perhaps the least reliable (or most crosstalk-prone) of the sensors because it has a larger field of view, and might be fooled by the equipment in the pit.
That leaves the bathy sensor. Its basically a diaphragm and a pressure sensor you screw to a waterproof housing, and submerge. Placed near the bottom of the pit, it would read the depth of the water by the pressure of the column above it. Most accurate, but also the most expensive. Last I checked, the sensor itself was US$60 on the usual online markets.
Ultimately I’ll probably do a length of copper pipe with a 90 elbow and a cap. I’ll drill and tap a port through the cap and thread and seal the bathy sensor into it, and feed the wire back up the pipe to the controller. I’m not sure if there a driver for it in ESPHome, but if nothing else I expect I can probably just read the analog voltage and alert on a set point.
I haven’t really fleshed it out as a design yet, but that’s what I’m most likely to do.
Are you familiar with WLED and ESPHome? You generally have two sets of pin outs, analog [pwm] and digital. You can hook almost anything up if you program your pin-outs to respond correctly. If you’re trying to get into programming on the ESP32, start with some Arduino programs. They both use the same C libraries.
