[HN Gopher] Ask HN: What have you built with ESPHome, ESP8266 or...
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Ask HN: What have you built with ESPHome, ESP8266 or similar
hardware
Recently, ESPHome was on the homepage
(https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40138228) and some people
shared their constructions. What else have you built yourself with
electronics like these? What makes your live easier or a little bit
more fun?
Author : fdw
Score : 82 points
Date : 2024-04-27 16:05 UTC (6 hours ago)
| sho_hn wrote:
| My GPT-powered e-Ink newspaper uses an esp32:
| https://imgur.com/a/NoTr8XX
| blankx32 wrote:
| Well done looks great
| bloopernova wrote:
| oh wow that's gorgeous!
| sp0d3rmun wrote:
| This looks amazing! Do you have a guide? Would love to recreate
| this!
| sho_hn wrote:
| My goals to release source and docs a la
| https://github.com/eikehein/hyelicht got waylaid by the
| ultimate DIY project of having a baby in November, but I will
| try to get it done this year!
| nickt wrote:
| I'm not sure that's what DIY means!
|
| Congrats on the little 'un!
| bradleyy wrote:
| I've used ESPHome to:
|
| Control my garage doors (thanks ratgdo!) Control my front gate
| (already had gate controls, this just triggers open/close)
| Control various appliances (ESPHome can be installed on "smart
| plugs")
|
| I definitely have additional things I'd like to do, but I've a
| dearth of time.
| euph0ria wrote:
| I built a CO2 sensor that activates a fan in my office room to
| pull in fresh air if the CO2 levels go above 700ppm
| fullspectrumdev wrote:
| I like this idea, any recommendations on specific CO2 sensor
| modules?
| sho_hn wrote:
| Not the OP, but I really like the SCD30 by Sensirion. It's
| the sensor used in the widely popular Aranet4, but the combo
| of sensor+MCU when you DIY it costs about a third of the
| commercially integrated product, so the feeling of thrifty
| hacker accomplishment is a nice bonus on top of the good HW.
| bloopernova wrote:
| You want an NDIR type CO2 sensor. "Nondispersive Infrared
| Sensor".
|
| Adafruit has lots of really nicely made sensors and MCUs:
| https://www.adafruit.com/product/4867
| swizzler wrote:
| Not OP, I use AirGradient recommended Senseair S8
| ahaucnx wrote:
| Last year I wrote a blog post [1] about different CO2 sensors
| and how they work. The best are NDIR (light) followed by
| photo acoustic sensors. Indoors they have very similar
| performance but outdoors, the NDIR (light) are much more
| accurate. In my personal opinion, the best ones are from
| SenseAir.
|
| [1] https://www.airgradient.com/blog/co2-sensors-photo-
| acoustic-...
| wcunning wrote:
| I'm just starting a project with some other people at my local
| maker space to add an ESPHome monitor for our industrial air
| compressor to monitor leak down on the various main lines going
| to areas of the shop and to monitor the compressor working time
| for maintenance checks and such. The end result will get open
| sourced, hopefully along with a nice DIN mount to also be used in
| CNC controller enclosures and the like.
| 7839284023 wrote:
| I made my standing desk "smart": https://community.home-
| assistant.io/t/desky-standing-desk-es...
| sho_hn wrote:
| I love that! Now I am seriously tempted to hack up the control
| unit of my Fully and get it into Home Assistant so I can adjust
| the desk with a slider on the laptop for ... reasons.
| 7839284023 wrote:
| There is also https://github.com/tjhorner/upsy-desky if you
| want to go for a more "professional" hardware look - but the
| kit is currently sold out.
| bloopernova wrote:
| I _want_ to build a house-positioning system, but time, energy,
| and skill are lacking.
|
| My wife, who has pretty extreme ADD, loses stuff like her wallet,
| keys, etc. We have Tiles on most stuff that gets lost, but
| sometimes the volume of the alert is lacking. I'd like something
| that uses multiple ESP32 or Pi receivers in known locations to
| triangulate the position of the bluetooth beacon in 3D space.
|
| It's probably a bad idea, there might not be accurate enough
| timings or data to pinpoint the location. I've read somewhere
| that UWB will be much better at this.
|
| EDIT: Another project idea: Sensor Light Switches. Would add
| sensors like occupancy, noise, pressure, temp, etc etc to the
| standard light switch plate/box. Then have that lovely data
| slurped up by something pretty to display it all.
| moepstar wrote:
| I think you might want to look into https://espresense.com/
|
| Basically, this will net you "room precision" location of
| people, but i can't see why it won't work for gadgets if they
| have a Tile on them.
|
| Not quite "in 3D space", but may be useful enough...
| glazura37 wrote:
| I've put a bunch of rPI zeroes throughout the house with
| varying degrees of success. Works best with the home assistant
| beacon on my Galaxy watch, it's likely tile tags will work
| better. The only downside is that the PIs require an external
| Bluetooth dongle hooked with a USB extender, because of wifi
| interference.
|
| I used raspberry so I can use room-assistant for home
| assistant. You could probably hack it up with a bunch of ESPs
| and a central server to aggregate it all. Then trilateration
| should be fairly simple.
| dotnet00 wrote:
| I setup an LED strip with an ESP8266 and ESPHome for my 3d
| printer enclosure. I recently took it apart and integrated it
| into my 3d printer itself, but planning to set it up again to
| light my figure collection instead.
|
| I also built a set of inertial full body trackers for VR usage
| with them. Although they could use some redesigning, probably
| with lower power MCUs, current ones are a bit too large for my
| liking.
| chybby wrote:
| I used an ESP8266 to build an air conditioning "remote" that I
| can control with my Home Assistant setup. I was pretty surprised
| when I moved and it still worked at the new apartment.
|
| I also bought some LED matrix displays that I'm going to use to
| display information about when trains are due at my nearby
| station.
| jesuslop wrote:
| There is a wide library of IR remote glue code at
|
| https://github.com/crankyoldgit/IRremoteESP8266/tree/master/...
| slau wrote:
| I built a toilet occupancy light for the office. We had a long
| office with a single toilet, so built a battery powered closed-
| door detector on one side, and a mains-powered sign that
| indicated whether the toilet was free or not.
|
| Very reliable, ESPHome was never an issue. This was circa 2018.
| shove wrote:
| I only got a proof-of-concept working, but I made a board that
| would allow payment for arcade games and pinball machines over
| wi-fi without disabling the coin slot. Free-play can be enabled
| by sensing the P1 and P2 start buttons. Security was an
| interesting puzzle because the 8266 ran out of memory when trying
| to host an SSL stack, so I went with HMAC signed messages.
| moepstar wrote:
| I use it to monitor my water meter in Home Assistant and have one
| sensor that reads various values (e.g. water temperature) from
| our domestic water heat pump via Modbus. The latter one could
| also be controlled with the ESP, however writing to Modbus makes
| me feel a little uneasy (that is mostly due to lacking
| documentation by the manufacturer, who apparently outsourced the
| firmware part).
| Mostlygeek wrote:
| I built a little robot that props open a door when the av cabinet
| gets too hot. It has a temperature sensor, two fans and a linear
| actuator. It even has a small webui so I can manually
| enable/disable cooling. Been working for several years.
| guiambros wrote:
| Ha, that's a great idea. I have a smart exhaust fan in the av
| closet, but it still lacks air circulation, so opening the door
| slightly every now and then (particularly when there's high
| load / heat dissipation) could be a nice extra feature.
|
| How did you mount the linear actuator? I need to retain the
| ability to manually open/close the door. Maybe using a magnetic
| latch.
| swizzler wrote:
| Some one else used a stepper motor actuated cam to open a
| dishwasher, could be used instead of a linear actuator:
| https://community.home-assistant.io/t/diy-automatic-
| opener-f...
| loganwedwards wrote:
| I have not built anything novel -- just utilizing community
| projects have been a wonderful improvement at home: 1. Ratgdo for
| the garage door 2. Esphome EcoNet for my water heater 3. Off the
| shelf Sonoff switches for some holiday lighting.
|
| All of this is tied with a bow via Home Assistant.
| isoprophlex wrote:
| Does a raspberry zero count? I replaced the dubiously secure
| Chinese box that came with my solar panels with a home grown
| energy monitoring solution, hooked up to HomeAssistant. And I
| made a full color eInk photo frame that displays seasonally
| appropriate, generated images from a stable diffusion like-algo.
| bloopernova wrote:
| Which colour e-ink panel did you use? Any pictures of your
| setup?
| isoprophlex wrote:
| An Inky 7.3 inch, pimoroni sells them. Pretty good, but the
| colors are cleary muted and it aggressively dithers (only 7
| different ink colors in pixel)
|
| I made an overly greasy movie to impress hiring managers on
| linkedin, should actually do a writeup and make some photos
| of the thing in its proper wooden frame...
|
| https://files.rombouts.email/photoframe.mov
|
| Also I run a fine tuned stable diffusion nowadays through
| Replicate ai, it now creates scenes starring my kids' pluche
| toys. Live view of the latest generation at the index page...
|
| https://files.rombouts.email
| mat_jack1 wrote:
| I'm helping our local Fablab to manage physical access with a
| series of ESP8266 and esp-rfid https://github.com/esprfid/esp-
| rfid/ (of which I became maintainer. If you want to use it as
| well I can help!)
| amluto wrote:
| I would pay real money for a system like this with actual
| security. The obvious starting point would be CTAP2 -- the
| protocol is open, high quality fobs are inexpensive (not as
| cheap as Mifare, though) and widely available from multiple
| sources, and the protocol has been analyzed for real. One could
| probably even extract an actual production grade implementation
| of the NFC side from the Android sources. Apple Home Key
| support would be nifty, too. PIV would be another credible
| choice.
|
| Extra bonus points for support for real commercial readers
| using OSDP's transparent mode or whatever they call it these
| days. As I understand it, an early standard involved a horrible
| hack that was so horrible that HID managed to patent it, but
| the protocol was redone to avoid being a horrible hack, and the
| new version is also unencumbered. Although maybe the spec costs
| $30.
| gumby271 wrote:
| I put together an esp32 + accelerometer in a little 3d printed
| box. Made two sets and taped one of each on my washer and dryer,
| now they detect the start and end of a cycle and send me a
| notification through home assistant. The tablet in the kitchen
| get a notification too and makes a special sound when the clothes
| are done!
| goda90 wrote:
| Oh I like that. We have LG washer and dryer but I have 0
| interest in connecting then to Wi-Fi. Right now we have a
| z-wave button sitting on the washing machine that starts a
| timer when we press it, but since the washing machine has
| variable run times, it's imperfect.
| kbutler wrote:
| We have a "smart" washer & dryer, and the Alexa voice
| announcement when the cycle finishes is handy.
| gumby271 wrote:
| It works pretty well, and it's nice having full control of
| the smarts. My washer and dryer don't have a built in buzzer
| for some weird reason, so it's been a nice upgrade.
| dgacmu wrote:
| Someone else on HN mentioned a couple of months ago that they
| were using a power meter for the same purpose. There are a
| lot of cheap zigbee and zwave outlets that will report power,
| though you'd have to implement the thresholding logic on your
| controller.
| seba_dos1 wrote:
| A set of cheap temperature sensors out of D1 minis that report
| data over MQTT. Just a simple piece of code, not using any fancy
| stuff like ESPHome or Tasmota as there was no need for it. In the
| end they are supposed to guide the gas boiler heating over
| OpenTherm, but haven't done that part yet.
|
| I've also made an e-ink calendar with bin collection schedule
| with Inkplate (ESP32) [0] and now I'm making a Frets on Fire-
| compatible rhythm game based on ESP32-S3 [1] (initially made for
| the CCCamp's flow3r badge, now designing a simplified board for
| it [2][3])
|
| [0] https://social.librem.one/@dos/106014037294005493
|
| [1] https://social.librem.one/@dos/111478238181935805
|
| [2] https://social.librem.one/@dos/112008114803722974
|
| [3] https://social.librem.one/@dos/112179746918615110
| KaiserPro wrote:
| The controller for this:
| https://www.secretbatcave.co.uk/projects/stock-ticker-machin...
| is an esp of somesort (I think 8266)
|
| I used ESPhome last month to measure how warm/cold the fish pond
| was (it was cold). That was a simple breadboard/Dallas one wire
| thing: https://esphome.io/components/sensor/dallas.html
| stephankoelle wrote:
| Last year I built a balcony watering system using an 8x ESP32
| relay system from Lilygo, paired with mini submersible pumps. To
| monitor plant health, I integrated MiFlora sensors over BLE.
| Managing minimum soil moisture and pump duration has been
| 'configured' by hosting a configuration files on Pastebin.
|
| This year, I'm taking it a step further by developing a
| management front-end. Instead of the hacker GUI using Pastebin,
| I'm implementing an extra M5 Atom running MicroPython with a web
| GUI. This interface allows me to configure the sensors, visualize
| sensor data with charts, and send notifications via NTFY to my
| phone.
|
| I am considering open-sourcing the project.
|
| https://www.lilygo.cc/products/t-relay-5v-8-channel-relay
|
| https://de.aliexpress.com/item/1005006100423471.html.
|
| https://shop.m5stack.com/products/atoms3-lite-esp32s3-dev-ki...
| jcims wrote:
| I built an automated apparatus to convert water, yeast and starch
| into sanitizer in April/May of 2020.
|
| I used ESP32s for individual sensing components (mostly
| temperature at various parts of the process but also a load cell
| for weight). I used the Tasmota firmware and tied them all
| together using MQTT over wifi. I drove it with node-red on a
| raspberry pi to build several PID loops and process controls and
| if I were to do anything similar again I would use the same
| architecture except I would add network booting for the ESP32s so
| I could swap them out as needed.
|
| Screenshot from a node-red dashboard from very early in the
| process.
|
| https://imgur.com/a/so7iZJX
|
| I ended up with 7 temp sensors and two load cells running on four
| ESP32s. By the time I had it optimized my job was to swap
| containers out every time it said to replace container over a
| speaker.
| idatum wrote:
| Battery powered home front gate sensor using an ESP-01s and MQTT.
|
| It's simple and I'm impressed that a single CR123A battery has
| lasted now 7+ months and still reading >= 3.1V.
|
| https://www.idatum.net/remote-front-gate-sensor.html
| praccu wrote:
| E Ink Todo list on my wall that pulls from Todoist, which I can
| update from my watch.
|
| https://blog.praccu.com/
| praccu wrote:
| I should update the post with details.
|
| I ended up using DFRobot firebeetle because it respects sleep
| mode. I'm at 15 months on one charge with a 10Ah battery.
| ixaxaar wrote:
| My AI chat thing: https://imgur.com/a/cxR8KpM (WIP). Connects to
| openai transcription, completion and tts APIs. Refactoring to use
| assistants, to use it to feed it my fridge's manual and have it
| think it's my fridge.
| arbuge wrote:
| I built this once:
|
| https://foundrytechnologies.com/relay.php
|
| It didn't sell in large volumes but it's fun to see the units
| that did sell checking in every 5 minutes from around the world
| to this day.
| blopp99 wrote:
| I have a Casino machine addon that connects to the cloud with
| json/websockets in production. And I have a vertical light
| controller for indoor farming. These arent with ESPHome. With
| ESPHome I have a water pump to recharge a big water container
| when gov sends water at certain times everyday.
| Tempest1981 wrote:
| I want to automate some window blinds to open/close, based on
| time of day, and maybe sunny-ness. Anyone try this? They came
| with a Velux remote control.
| throwup238 wrote:
| I have forty dutch buckets in four zones with cucumbers,
| tomatoes, eggplants, and peppers hooked up to two thirty gallon
| reservoirs and four ten gallon drainage tanks via a series of
| pumps and valves (using ESPhome sprinkler controller module). The
| first reservoir is pure RO water fed by a valve connected to the
| tap and the second is connected to a series of peristaltic pumps
| and sensors. They pump pH up and down as well as nutrients from
| concentrate into the reservoir and the concentrate bottles sit on
| DIY magnetic stirrers that run daily to prevent precipitation.
| Six ESP32s in waterproof Sockitboxes control all of this via a
| bunch of relays. The pH controller ESP32 gets mqtt messages via
| Atlas Scientific pH sensor while most of the other pumps are
| either on a schedule or respond to mqtt messages from Vegetronix
| water level sensors. I also have several Vegetronix liquid flow
| sensors that are hooked up to an ESP32 with solar and a battery
| that acts as a watchdog and alerts me via text message and indoor
| alarm if water doesnt flow for 12 or more hours.
|
| The outdoor tap is also hooked up via valve to a drip irrigation
| loop that waters some roses and pots full of herbs, cabbage, etc.
|
| The indoor setup is similar but much smaller with metal halide
| lamp and LEDs in a grow tent for out of season growing and
| seedlings. Protip: never put vining plants like cucumbers in a
| grow tent. Its a huge pain.
| nuancebydefault wrote:
| I built a live programmable led string using micropython on
| esp32. Just connect to its wireless AP, type some python code and
| see the result in the led string.
| ohthehugemanate wrote:
| I use homeassistant, so the esphome integration makes esp32s
| priceless.
|
| - integrated my projector via RS232 to esp32
|
| - integrated my projector screen via IR module
|
| - ir receiver lets me use an old tv remote as a universal whole
| house remote
|
| - motion sensors everywhere so I never have to touch a light
| switch again
|
| - several wled units for accent lighting, night lights etc
|
| - built a laser maze with esp32s and light detectors for my kid's
| birthday.
|
| - I've played around with BLE based room detection, but it's not
| really useful yet (or maybe ever).
|
| I love em!
| swalberg wrote:
| I have one that I attached to an old antenna rotator so I can
| control it from the network. And another that monitors Github's
| status API and lights an LED when they're down.
|
| Got a nice pair of Github socks at re:invent for showing a pic of
| that last one at their booth!
| m4cr0s wrote:
| Built an add on to my Pacman machine that "inserts coins" when I
| ask Siri to "Show me the money" :)
| axelerator wrote:
| A web interface for infrared remote controls
| https://www.instructables.com/Web-IR-Remote-With-Esp8266-Nod...
| exitnode wrote:
| A remote control for a ham radio antenna rotator:
| https://dk1mi.radio/remote-control-hygain-antenna-rotator/
| swizzler wrote:
| Controlling Mitsubishi mini split heat pumps instead of paying
| hundreds for Mitsubishis solution:
| https://github.com/geoffdavis/esphome-mitsubishiheatpump
| swizzler wrote:
| I have a very old rotary phone that you "dial" how bright to make
| the lights. esp8266 detects dial pulses, sends mqtt message to
| home assistant, home assistant sets zigbee can/recessed lights to
| requested setting
| vosper wrote:
| That sounds really fun to use, I love it
| nipperkinfeet wrote:
| I built my own personal weather station when Wunderground was
| destroyed by TWC and IBM. It has continued to grow over the last
| two years. With each new idea I have, I have been adding
| additional functionality to it. It's fun and I've learnt a lot
| because multiple programming languages are needed to get
| everything to function.
| boustrophedon wrote:
| I built this weather forecast / todo list with the weather.gov
| and todoist APIs https://harrystern.net/halldisplay.html
| amelius wrote:
| I didn't build anything yet with it, but I want to do something
| like this project:
|
| https://www.instructables.com/ESP32-Bluetooth-Reflow-Oven/
| dgacmu wrote:
| I tend to roll my own with rp-picos for no good reason other than
| they're easy.
|
| 1) Wattmeter for a toy solar installation - broadcasts a UDP
| packet every few seconds, which I then record into a staging JSON
| log that gets ingested into DuckDB.
|
| 2) Little pico-w wifi temperature sensor that feeds into the
| raspberry pi zero that controls my boiler.
|
| Thread about the boiler:
| https://hachyderm.io/deck/@dave_andersen/111579107766689328
|
| github with some really crappy rust code:
| https://github.com/dave-andersen/boiler
|
| The boiler control is the fun one but it's not entirely embedded
| stuff. Runs a little control loop that turns down the boiler
| modulation based upon the difference between target and current
| temperature. Improves operating efficiency by a fair bit and
| reduces temperature swings. Makes me wish residential HVAC
| systems were more sophisticated - these are things any good
| industrial control system can do.
|
| 3) Made an "ok to wake" light for my son -- added a controllable
| LED strip to his clock with a pico-w in it that changes from
| orange to multicolored at 6:30am as a non-intrusive "yes, you can
| come bug your parents" signal.)
|
| https://hachyderm.io/deck/@dave_andersen/112091315519210298
| cocoflunchy wrote:
| I also made an "ok to wake" alarm clock for my daughter :)
| https://cosmith.fr/projects/nightbox
| alexose wrote:
| I built out a remote sensing platform using ESP32 + LoRa. The
| attempt was to hit the sweet spot between cheap, easy, and
| reliable:
|
| https://github.com/alexose/dorothy
| antirez wrote:
| https://github.com/antirez/Freakwan
| mft_ wrote:
| I have three strings of ws2812b LEDs on my kitchen controlled by
| two ESP8266s with PIR sensors, providing various under-cupboard
| lighting. It sounds over-engineered and was quite a lot of work
| to set up, but I chose to 'roll my own' because I couldn't find
| anything pre-made with the right combination of features without
| being too bulky. (Honestly, I'd happily have bought someone's
| product instead.)
|
| A nice bonus is that I can program different patterns to suit
| moods or events. (For example, my partner requested scrolling red
| and green stripes for Christmas.)
|
| (Tangent: pretty sure that despite having followed online
| guidance very closely, the power supplies I bought were _vastly_
| over-specced.)
| tgv wrote:
| I once built an Arduino project that monitored one room to an sd
| card while we were on holidays. That allowed me (in principle) to
| know if the heating could be lowered a bit more during absence.
| The results were not conclusive.
|
| Another thingy tried to determine where the mouse that sometimes
| came into another room came from, by using infrared distance
| sensors. Never caught anything.
|
| What did work was a two op fm synth with midi in and audio out. I
| was satisfied when it worked, so I didn't go all the way of
| making a 4 or 6 op version with pots and buttons (or one of those
| horrible deep menu systems).
|
| So nothing practical. Just toying around, trying to get a bit of
| knowledge about how things work and having fun at the same time.
| bartkappenburg wrote:
| I've built a small scale 'flat' that is meant to act as a
| 'living' object that is a bed side companion for sick children
| that are lying in a hospital.
|
| The idea is that you give a certain floor to family or friends so
| that they can control the lights (and color). The child can see
| if parents, grandparents or friends are home or not (based on a
| schedule or manual action). It gives a sense of reassurance and
| closeness of the relatives. Also very fun to see a living object
| next to your bed.
|
| See it here: https://imgur.com/gallery/4ZOYdH5 And here (colors):
| https://imgur.com/gallery/z0yZJ7d
|
| The hardware is a Atom Lite from M5Stack (see:
| https://shop.m5stack.com/products/atom-lite-esp32-developmen...)
| and a led stripe with addressable leds.
|
| The software on the atom is micropython and the neopixel module.
| It connects to a webapp (through wifi) and listens to a JSON
| endpoint that gives the states of the leds (aka floors).
|
| The webapp is a django app with a main user for the flat and he
| or she can invite others to control certain floors. All mobile
| friendly (no native app).
|
| We have 4 live and deployed flats and are in the process of
| making more for our local hospitals.
|
| The flat (wood) is custom made and pretty labour intensive.
|
| A very fun project and learned a lot about hardware (and the
| deployment) coming from a saas background.
| stavros wrote:
| I built almost the same thing! Mine is a Christmas house with a
| tiny person living inside, you get a realistic fireplace, a TV,
| and the person goes around the house every so often:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1RUqTN-7_gU
| klondike_klive wrote:
| This is a very sweet and beautiful thing.
| stavros wrote:
| I've built tons of things. Most usefully, I built
| presence/motion/light/temperature sensors for my home, along with
| IR transmitter so I can control my TV/AC. They're about the size
| of two matchboxes, they cost about $10 each and they're amazing
| for my home automation:
|
| https://gitlab.com/stavros/sensor-board/
|
| I've built cat toys for my blind cat, toy planes, a CNC, a cat
| feeder, a back-scratching robot, and more stuff that I can't
| remember. I love the ESP8266.
|
| Also, an e-ink display that shows my calendar:
|
| https://www.stavros.io/posts/making-the-timeframe/
|
| A house with a tiny person living in it:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1RUqTN-7_gU
|
| A way to project images in mid-air, for long exposure
| photography:
|
| https://www.stavros.io/posts/behold-ledonardo/
|
| A button that I can press to get food:
|
| https://www.stavros.io/posts/emergency-food-button/
|
| A drone that blows bubbles:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xk99zrlAp9U
|
| A toy bus that shows you when the next actual bus will come:
|
| https://www.stavros.io/posts/bus-stop-bus/
|
| A rotary mobile phone:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fSkdWQswpc8
|
| An alarm clock with the weather so I know whether it's worth
| waking up for tennis:
|
| https://www.stavros.io/posts/do-not-be-alarmed-clock/
| heyitsguay wrote:
| I've been thinking about creating some more interesting
| interactive cat toys like this -- wiring the hardware and doing
| the programming are pretty easy, but where I'm stuck is
| building the actual cat toy bits that the electronics control!
| How have you approached this in your projects?
| stavros wrote:
| It depends on what you want to do, in my case, I have a blind
| cat and I needed a toy that she could hear. I 3d printed a
| simple ball, and I made a very small circuit with a bare
| ESP8266, a speaker, a small battery, and a vibration sensor.
| The sensor resets the ESP, which plays a short song on the
| speaker and then goes into deep sleep.
|
| What are you thinking of making?
| aag wrote:
| I built a weather dashboard using an M5Paper from M5Stack. The
| M5Paper has an E-ink touch display, is the size of a small smart
| phone, and only needs to be charged every week or so.
|
| https://speechcode.com/blog/weather-dashboard/
|
| I feel sheepish mentioning this project because there are so, so
| many weather displays like this. But this is mine, and not only
| was it fun to put together, but I use it every day.
| wruza wrote:
| I made one of the prototypes of a shooting target for a wacky
| wheels-inspired buggy racing project with esp and a pressure
| sensor (bmp something) enclosed in a plastic tank. Had some fun
| shooting at it from a paintball gun and looking at the graphs,
| but real conditions were too noisy for the most mechanical
| prototypes. The project was abandoned. I believe I fried one esp
| due to the lack of electrical experience and burned few fingers.
| I also remember having some arduino in the loop, but can't tell
| why (or if, tried few setups in process).
| robryk wrote:
| I have a power meter that sits in front of my kettle (that I also
| use as a teapot) that notifies me when the tea has finished
| brewing (i.e. when it finished boiling + a fixed delay).
| jcalvinowens wrote:
| This is a simple temperature sensor that runs on four AAA
| batteries and POSTS measurements via wifi:
| https://github.com/jcalvinowens/tempsensor
|
| This is a LED wall clock that synchronizes time over NTP:
| https://github.com/jcalvinowens/wallclock
| kQq9oHeAz6wLLS wrote:
| I have an ESP8266 with motor controller opening and closing my
| chicken coop door at sunup and sundown. Also has a button to
| manually open or close.
|
| It also monitors the temperature with a DS18B sensor, and uploads
| it via REST to a receiver that logs it to a database.
|
| And it emaila me when the door opens or closes.
| tbyehl wrote:
| I turned a light-up Pac Ghost into an indicator lamp for my
| Uptime Kumar instances.
|
| https://github.com/psitem/uptime-kuma-pacman-ghost-light
|
| I've been working on a replacement controller for the Omlet
| automatic chicken coop door. They've recently released their own
| connected controller but given the shortcomings of the original
| I'm not sure I trust it to be reliable enough to leave my
| feathered friends unsupervised for days at a time.
|
| Next in the queue is replacing my ATHOM garage door controller
| with my own that will add a second reed switch to detect that the
| door is fully open.
|
| And I'm mulling over ways I could monitor the feed level in my
| chicken feeders. And maybe close them off at night to keep other
| critters out. But it's tricky because I don't want to replace
| what I have with a design that might be easier to automate, as
| they've held up well against the rain and I'm lazy.
| mostthingsweb wrote:
| I reverse-engineered how my adjustable bed base works, then built
| (and sell) a hub for controlling it from Home Assistant. See
| https://blog.laplante.io/2019/01/11/reverse-engineering-the-...
| and https://www.tindie.com/products/cplaplante/temperbridge/
| klondike_klive wrote:
| Haven't done it yet but I'm making a booknook for my gf of the
| verandah in a particular Guatemalan hostel on the river where we
| stayed on our Central American holiday a few years ago. When a
| button is pressed it plays a looping mp3 of the jungle ambiance
| (ripped from a video I took on the actual holiday), together with
| a rippling light effect on the resin "river".
| aranelsurion wrote:
| I've built a hardware monitoring screen for my main/gaming PC,
| that displays CPU/GPU usage and temperature, RAM/VRAM usage etc.
| It has been very useful for me to be able to see all those stats
| at a glance while in game, to see where my computer is
| bottlenecked. Oh and also it doubles as a desk clock. :)
| deivid wrote:
| I've built a bunch of things:
|
| A snapcast client, which can play audio synchronized on multiple
| rooms
|
| https://github.com/DavidVentura/esp-snapcast
|
| An stratum-1 NTP _server_ (read: gets its time from GPS), and
| displays time with unreasonable precision (not necessarily
| accuracy!)
|
| https://github.com/DavidVentura/esp-ntp
|
| A few HUB75 signs which display public transport status (the
| public transport bits are not published anywhere yet)
|
| https://github.com/DavidVentura/hub75-esp
|
| An "on-air" sign that turns on/off if my wife or I join a meeting
| (based on camera/mic usage, for Linux and Mac)
|
| https://github.com/DavidVentura/on-air
|
| A purely decorative sign that looks like a pixelated fire
|
| https://github.com/DavidVentura/matrix-fire
|
| A kindle-controlled bedside lamp (just mqtt, but functionality is
| priceless - blogpost is unrelated but it's the only video I've
| got)
|
| https://blog.davidv.dev/building-an-mqtt-client-for-the-kind...
|
| An HDMI switcher (just a GPIO toggle) & a full-house blinds
| controller (just a relay hooked to the central, manual system)
|
| https://blog.davidv.dev/extending-the-capabilities-of-dumb-d...
| Liftyee wrote:
| My first contact with ESPHome revived an old ESP32 sunrise alarm
| clock project of mine whose hardware was all complete but
| software was half-baked shoddy C++. It has adjustable color
| temperature (to wake me up with blue light) and can play
| arbitrary MP3s as an alarm.
|
| After discovering this power I also threw together an ESP32
| timelapse device that plugs into the remote shutter port on my
| DSLR, configurable over Home Assistant of course. Was thinking of
| using the camera on the ESP32-CAM to take automatic photos of
| planes (computer vision??), but haven't gotten round to that yet.
|
| ESPHome really is great for replacing the code I can't be
| bothered to write - it's hard to do after just having put
| together the hardware. The next project on the list is an
| environmental sensor and curtain opener for my room, using an
| ESP8266 and RS-232 controlled servo module (what I have laying
| around).
| gbrayut wrote:
| I connected an ESP8266 via serial protocol to the extra
| programming pins on a QMK based keypad
| (https://www.crowdsupply.com/anavi-technology/anavi-macro-pad...)
| so that it can have layers that directly trigger actions via Home
| Assistant API.
|
| Also use the Bee Motion ESP32-S3
| (https://www.crowdsupply.com/smart-bee-designs/bee-motion-s3) for
| their PIR motion sensing and running other sensors around the
| house.
|
| And I have an old Wemos D1 mini connected to my Arduino based
| smart garage door that helps automate things like lock/unlocking
| the front door or triggering other presence based actions.
| PrivateButts wrote:
| As a joke, I built a jar that would call a phone number to inform
| them the status of the jar. Thing looked like a bomb.
| Shish2k wrote:
| I made a glowy box that takes up 1U in my homelab rack and
| represents my home internet reliability - an esp32c3 (risc-v)
| which pings 8.8.8.8 every minute and shows the past 30 minutes of
| results on a strip of 30 LEDs (green -> red for ping time, blue
| for errors)
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(page generated 2024-04-27 23:00 UTC)