Advice Required - ESPHome & Nextion 7" Touchscreen Display as a Cooker Controller

ESPHome
1

Hi,

I have a 7" Nextion Touchscreen display ( NX8048P070-011C/R ) which I bought for an Arduino-based cooker control project a couple of years ago and I have never got around to using it. Recently having successfully made a number of sensors using ESP32 Dev Kit’s, my thought’s then turned to using an ESP32 as the MCU to control the cooker instead, as there are so many more advantages to using this device than an Arduino Nano.

I have read pretty much everything I can on the HA community about using an ESP32 and the Nextion display and I now seem to be more confused than ever. :man_facepalming:t2:

It would seem that some people have been successful in getting the two devices to talk to each other and act as weather stations, and wall-mounted dashboard displays - it seems some others haven’t been successful in getting them to play nicely either. Before I commit to a lot of time, frustration, and hope (hoping not to re-invent the wheel or go down a road that just comes to a dead-end) I thought I would ask this very knowledgeable community if what I want to achieve is possible and practical before ultimately deciding the same for myself in three months time and wondering why I never asked the question in the first instance.

I would like to use the display to do the following, via the ESP32

  1. Turn on/off the cooker - the display and ESP32 will have power to it permanently.
  2. Readout the cooker temperature (k-type thermocouples/ MAX6675 already fitted in the cooker)
  3. Set the cooker temperature via the display - either preset temp’ buttons or +/- increment buttons; probably a mix of both
  4. Set on & off times for cooker (if possible)
  5. Use a PIR as a human presence detector to turn the backlight of the display on or off - no point in it being on if nobody is in the kitchen.

In addition to the above, I would like to be able to see these parameters in Home Assistant and change them in HA too, (with those changes also being reflected on the Nextion display).

“She Who Must Be Obeyed” is not a HA user, so the display interface has to have enough WAF for it to be used easily.

The graphical side of things on the Nextion is the easy bit really, it is the ease of getting the two devices to talk to each other reliably that is my main concern.

I would be interested to hear from other community members’ with their experiences of using this type of display, or, alternatively, if it is just easier to set up a 7" 2nd Gen Nexus (currently sat in a drawer, unloved) with a custom dashboard to do the same thing ?

Many thanks in advance for any thoughts or advice on this.

Cheers,

Mike.

2

That is all very doable using esphome.

The tricky part is the nextion stuff. There are some examples of nextion code on the esphome website. DIY Examples — ESPHome. the watering example may give some inspiration as it is about controlling external hardware.

I am not 100% sure which nextion screens are compatible with esphome.

3

Thanks for the response Nick, very much appreciated. Having now slept on this, I’m forming a different opinion on the Nextion display from yesterday.

As I noted previously, I have looked at various examples and read various threads I’m beginning to think that using the Nextion screen may just be adding a lot more complexity to what I want to achieve than it really needs to be. As a recent adopter of Home Assistant, and going through a steep, steep learning curve with it, my understanding of yaml isn’t the best. Using the Nextion display would certainly test that knowledge, and, furthermore, the Nextion display has only one good point that I can think of - in that should I decide to move house, the user interface can stay put and attached to the cooker, whereas I would probably relocate much RPi based stuff and any standalone tablets used as dashboards. I can’t see this situation happening though, so I’m bothered about something that is not going to occur… :roll_eyes: (that was the only positive point I could think of for using the Nextion screen, but in mitigation, I bought it to attach to an Arduino Nano, and well before I was made aware of ESP32 devices, ESPHome and Home Assistant).

My thoughts have been tending towards the unloved, 7" Nexus tablet in my desk drawer. If I go down the route of using the Nexus 7" tablet, all the ‘spade work’ has been done really. The display is 1920 x 1200, WiFi is built in, the front-facing camera can be used as a presence detector, it’s already touchscreen, and if I wanted a keyboard click as feedback it is there built-in, etc, etc. All I would need to do is to run a USB charging lead to the point I want to mount the device and connect it via WiFi. I can run it in kiosk mode too for the full-screen effect… and the work put into setting up a custom dashboard for it would be beneficial in my understanding of HA too and can be applied to additional wall-mounted displays in the future. It would just be a case of pulling together various parts of HA projects others have already done to get it working in a package that has a high level of WAF and is easy to use. I’m not a big believer in reinventing the wheel!

The ESP32 is already set up and in situ taking readings from the k-type thermocouples installed in the cooker. A control relay is also attached (although not connected to anything yet). I’ve now data coming in as currently, the cooker is still using the existing (original, inaccurate, and life-expired) thermo-electrical controls so I can see how it heats up and plot a temp’ curve which I hope to replicate via the ESP32. So that is a start, at least.

I’ll probably add to this thread as & when I progress further with the project - it may help others who have similar ideas. :man_facepalming:t2:

Cheers,

Mike.

4

I hope you do, and look forward to it.

Another project you possibly aren’t aware of it openhasp. It is good for UI displays, although it does require some programming. The site is Overview - openHASP and you will see the lovely touch displays it can create.

Good luck.

5

Morning Nick,

Thanks for posting that; a very interesting site, and a useful repository for small, localized control panels. I’ve now bookmarked it as it could be useful for the future expansion of the HA system. (She Who Must Be Obeyed permitting :flushed: )

I’ll add a condensed post from the thread about the thermostat visuals and temps to this thread once I have it working how I want, just for completeness really. Although, I recently added a full write-up of my analogue gas meter reader project under the “Show Off Your Projects” section. So it may be better that I create a new write-up post (once I’ve completed the project) under that section for ease of searching. More than happy to do so in the hope that helps somebody else who wants to achieve a similar thing.

Cheers,

Mike.