6 ms·

They display temperature and humidity on the LCD display, but also transmit the temp + humidity every 10 minutes or so via Bluetooth Low Energy. Battery lasts

They display temperature and humidity on the LCD display, but also transmit the temp + humidity every 10 minutes or so via Bluetooth Low Energy. Battery lasts around a year (on paper) so they make for cheap alternatives to the Zigbee temperature + humidity sensor in the OP article (although that one is pretty cheap as well!) No internet needed if you set up a Raspberry Pi or ESP32 and run some software which can e.g decode the BLE messages and publish them to MQTT. ESPHome has a component for this which can get you up and running in a few minutes if you have an ESP32 lying around (needs to be ESP32 as ESP8266 doesn't have Bluetooth).

StavrosK 6y ago
That's pretty cool, though my WiFi is already pretty crowded, so rather than have an ESP32 in every room and on WiFi, I think I'll get an ITEAD ZigBee hub and go that route instead, thanks!
- madjam002 6y ago
  Yeah fair enough the Zigbee ones will last longer with one battery anyway. I only have one ESP32 for the 4 BLE sensors, it handles them all fine across different corners of my flat (the furthest one is around 10m through 2 walls). The same ESP32 is also in my utility cupboard with a photoresistor attached taped to my electric meter which counts the LED pulses so I can see how much electricity I’ve used in Home Assistant as well. Esphome makes it easy to configure multiple use cases for one device like that
  - StavrosK 6y ago
    Hmm, that's interesting. I've never tried ESPhome, but I should. I rolled my own five years ago and it's been working fine so far, but ESPhome + Home Assistant might be easier to configure and update than Espurna.
    - madjam002 6y ago
      Yeah I was using Espurna on my lightbulbs that I replaced the firmware with (they were Tuya-based bulbs so I swapped them for Espurna). It was rock solid but I decided to move to Esphome as I liked the YAML based config, makes for a more "infra-as-code" style for IoT devices :) Since then I'm using it on all kinds now, my own ESP32 dev board like I mentioned for the BLE sensors, and a variety of Shelly 1 devices and random brands of WiFi smart plugs from Amazon.
      - StavrosK 6y ago
        That sounds great, I like Espurna for the web interface and general quality but I really hate the C-style header file configuration, it's very hard to update your code. With YAML, I at least know that the file I have will continue to work across updates. Seems much more usable.

StavrosK 6y ago

That's pretty cool, though my WiFi is already pretty crowded, so rather than have an ESP32 in every room and on WiFi, I think I'll get an ITEAD ZigBee hub and go that route instead, thanks!

madjam002 6y ago
Yeah fair enough the Zigbee ones will last longer with one battery anyway. I only have one ESP32 for the 4 BLE sensors, it handles them all fine across different corners of my flat (the furthest one is around 10m through 2 walls). The same ESP32 is also in my utility cupboard with a photoresistor attached taped to my electric meter which counts the LED pulses so I can see how much electricity I’ve used in Home Assistant as well. Esphome makes it easy to configure multiple use cases for one device like that
- StavrosK 6y ago
  Hmm, that's interesting. I've never tried ESPhome, but I should. I rolled my own five years ago and it's been working fine so far, but ESPhome + Home Assistant might be easier to configure and update than Espurna.
  - madjam002 6y ago
    Yeah I was using Espurna on my lightbulbs that I replaced the firmware with (they were Tuya-based bulbs so I swapped them for Espurna). It was rock solid but I decided to move to Esphome as I liked the YAML based config, makes for a more "infra-as-code" style for IoT devices :) Since then I'm using it on all kinds now, my own ESP32 dev board like I mentioned for the BLE sensors, and a variety of Shelly 1 devices and random brands of WiFi smart plugs from Amazon.
    - StavrosK 6y ago
      That sounds great, I like Espurna for the web interface and general quality but I really hate the C-style header file configuration, it's very hard to update your code. With YAML, I at least know that the file I have will continue to work across updates. Seems much more usable.