I recently decided I wanted to start monitoring the temperature and, less importantly, the humidity in multiple places in our home, and after researching options I decided to go with HA.
After looking at the options for monitoring temperature (I found thesetwo threads very helpful) I want to have a go at making my own sensors using ESPHome.
It would be nice to not have to spend a lot of time on identifying and sourcing parts for this so I can spend more of my time and energy on assembling and experimenting with the sensors themselves. I also don’t have a lot of experience sourcing this kind of part. I’m okay with spending a bit more on parts if it means they’re more reliable or easier to source.
I have general experience and tools for things like soldering and programming but very little specific experience with microcontrollers.
I’m in the USA.
My rough understanding of what I need for each sensor (let’s say ~5 of them):
ESP8266 or ESP32 (any reason to prefer one over the other? Do I need something like a breakout board to make this project easier?).
BME280 sensor (it looks like some people also use DHT* but in one of the threads somebody mentions the humidity sensor gets saturated after a week or two).
A power supply.
I do not need a case (I have a 3d printer and am happy to design and print my own).
What else do I need?
Bonuses:
I may also get a few of the LYWSD03MMC Xiaomi Bluetooth sensors, and it would be nice if my DIY sensors could work as base stations for the Bluetooth sensors and send the Xiaomi data to HA over WiFi.
In one place it would be useful to add a water detection sensor as well, so it would be nice to be able to add that alongside the temp/humidity sensor on one of them.
It would be fun to be able to add a display to some of the sensors to show the current data.
Does anybody have recommendations about exactly what I need and where to get them from?
Thanks, I really appreciate any help you can give me.
If you are in the US and you want local, try Sparkfun or Adafruit. Otherwise Amazon, Aliexpress and Banggood.
I’ll be interested if you get the Bluetooth sensors to work, there are some examples on the ESPHome BLE Client page but I certainly haven’t got it to work so far, not that I have tried hard…
As for power supply, any reasonable quality USB brick, or if you want to hardwire then a 5V or 3.3V power supply from your local electronics shop.
Also - I don’t prototype on a breadboard, I just keep a good supply of male header pins and some female-female jumper cables. But it’s a personal choice.
I have a few temperature nodes around the house and property. They all run on Wemos D1 Minis ($5 each on Amazon) and a DS18b20 temperature sensor. Most are powered with a 5V cellphone charger (from the Dollar Store) and one on a solar charger. Using ESPHome on the Wemos modules and Home Assistant.
Here’s a good place to start for ideas. I’ve had a few of these running for a number of years. @bruhautomation used to make some excellent HA content.
You want may want the esp32 instead of the 8266, because the esp32 has bluetooth, and the 8266 does not.
I am using esp32 BLE (with espHome) to read data from Govee 5075 humidity/temp sensor and forward that data to HA. I am using same esp board to read analog soil moisture from multiple indoor plants.
Highly recommend these sensors. Battery life is great, they can be found for less than $10 with shipping and accuracy is good. You can use an ESP32 as a “Bluetooth hub” to forward the temp and humidity data to HA. Also recommend using an ESP32 with Ethernet and I prefer to use the Olimex ESP32-POE for a power over Ethernet setup or a QuinESP32 ABE if PoE isn’t necessary. WiFi can be a huge source of heart ache and Ethernet has proven to be much more reliable for many.
