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I am a VERY low-effort hardware person (even soldering is um, not my favorite) but for years my approach has been: 1) Go to Amazon and buy a three pack of ESP3

I am a VERY low-effort hardware person (even soldering is um, not my favorite) but for years my approach has been: 1) Go to Amazon and buy a three pack of ESP32 dev boards with headers[0]. They're always some random seller, etc but I've probably had one DoA/failure after buying dozens from random sellers over the years. 2) Get a dupont wires variety pack[1]. 3) Optionally (but good to have) get some breadboards [2]. 4) Familiarize yourself with various supported temperature/motion/humidity/relays/etc. Esphome has a supported list[3]. 5) Search for the chip name, etc on Amazon. Example[4]. 6) Familiarize yourself with the ESP32 dev board pins, GPIO, etc. Most sellers will include a picture that looks something like this[5] and most of them are pretty "standard" these days. 7) Wire stuff up, configure with esphome. 8) Once you have things up and running, shove everything in an old box (iPhone boxes are especially sturdy). Other options are various project boxes[6], 3D printing, etc. It's usually easy enough to cut out/drill whatever you need. At the end of the day you can do some pretty impressive things like directly combining temperature sensors, humidity, presence detection, PIR motion, air particulate, relays, etc even on a single board thanks to ample GPIO and esphome. All for (typically) something like $10 per "location" where you need the stuff. Even less if you buy from Aliexpress, etc. Of course for "install" you'll need power supplies and (typically) USB-A to micro-USB power cables but most of us have drawers full of these things from old phones, etc. Good news is ESP32 boards absolutely sip power (something like 100mW or less) even with all of your "stuff" attached. [0] - https://www.amazon.com/ESP-WROOM-32-Development-Microcontroller-Integrated-Compatible/dp/B08D5ZD528/?th=1 https://www.amazon.com/ESP-WROOM-32-Development-Microcontrol... [1] - https://www.amazon.com/EDGELEC-Breadboard-Optional-Assorted-Multicolored/dp/B07GD2BWPY?th=1 https://www.amazon.com/EDGELEC-Breadboard-Optional-Assorted-... [2] - https://www.amazon.com/Breadboards-Solderless-Breadboard-Distribution-Connecting/dp/B07DL13RZH https://www.amazon.com/Breadboards-Solderless-Breadboard-Dis... [3] - https://esphome.io/index.html https://esphome.io/index.html [4] - https://www.amazon.com/Teyleten-Robot-Digital-Temperature-Humidity/dp/B0CPHQC9SF/ https://www.amazon.com/Teyleten-Robot-Digital-Temperature-Hu... [5] - https://lastminuteengineers.com/esp32-pinout-reference/ https://lastminuteengineers.com/esp32-pinout-reference/ [6] - https://www.amazon.com/LeMotech-Plastic-Electrical-Junction-72x42x23mm/dp/B07F3Y8L95 https://www.amazon.com/LeMotech-Plastic-Electrical-Junction-...

8A51C 2y ago
I had a solar powered project setup with environment sensors in my shed. After a while the bugs moved into the elctronics, corrosion ensued and caused shorts which killed everything. The lesson I learned is to seal project boxes up really well. The whole boxing something up and getting power to it thing is the hardest and least enjoyable bit of hardware projects for me.
- kkielhofner 2y ago
  Good point and batteries, solar, exterior environments, etc are what I would consider "advanced" use cases with significant additional challenges and considerations. All of my use-cases are interior environments with the most "challenging" being garages. Generally speaking with any kind of lower-level electronics like this frying and bricking stuff is part of the learning experience and a rite of passage.
- brewtide 2y ago
  I read this as I'm standing next to my bare esp32 with dht22 temp sensor hanging off it with DuPont wires... Nevermind the ones in the schoolhouse, basement, chicken coop... So, yeah, I fully agree. One day I'll buy a 3d printer but until that day, wires and some tape. Everything seems cheap enough to be sacrificial if that's the end result.
tbyehl 2y ago
As a fellow lazy hobbyist, I'm gonna suggest that buying the cheapest ESP32 / -C3 / -C6 boards can be a poor value. The cheap ones are often > 25.4mm wide so on a single standard breadboard the pins are only accessible on one side[0]. Also having recently been fighting CircuitPython running out of memory parsing a ~35KB response from a web service, boards with some PSRAM are real nice to have. And speaking of CircuitPython, ESP32-S3/S2 boards can run the UF2 bootloader for that Pi Pico-like experience. Waveshare's super compact ESP32-S3-Mini (or Zero) has become my first-to-grab. For 5 direct from their China site it works out to $7.35/ea pre-soldered with shipping or save a buck each for unsoldered. 2MB PSRAM and 13 usable GPIO. They also have less cheap -S3 boards in Arduino Nano ESP32, Pi Pico, and ESP32-S3-DevKitC-1[1] formats. And the oddball ESP32 One in Pi Zero format, using an ESP32 w/ off-die PSRAM. They sell on Amazon, too. A genuine Espressif ESP32-S2-DevKitC-1-N8R2 is $8 on Amazon, a relative bargain if you need it tomorrow and can live with one less LX7 core and no Bluetooth. [0] If you use the trick of spanning two breadboards side-by-side, that's an extra cost that could have gone towards a better smaller board. [1] Beware of cheap boards claiming to be copies of Espressif's 25.4mm board designs, many have been widened to ~28mm. Bad ESP32-S[3|2]-DevKit[C|M]-1 copies give themselves away by having enough room on top to put pin labels next to the pins instead of between them.

8A51C 2y ago

I had a solar powered project setup with environment sensors in my shed. After a while the bugs moved into the elctronics, corrosion ensued and caused shorts which killed everything. The lesson I learned is to seal project boxes up really well. The whole boxing something up and getting power to it thing is the hardest and least enjoyable bit of hardware projects for me.

kkielhofner 2y ago
Good point and batteries, solar, exterior environments, etc are what I would consider "advanced" use cases with significant additional challenges and considerations. All of my use-cases are interior environments with the most "challenging" being garages. Generally speaking with any kind of lower-level electronics like this frying and bricking stuff is part of the learning experience and a rite of passage.
brewtide 2y ago
I read this as I'm standing next to my bare esp32 with dht22 temp sensor hanging off it with DuPont wires... Nevermind the ones in the schoolhouse, basement, chicken coop... So, yeah, I fully agree. One day I'll buy a 3d printer but until that day, wires and some tape. Everything seems cheap enough to be sacrificial if that's the end result.

tbyehl 2y ago

As a fellow lazy hobbyist, I'm gonna suggest that buying the cheapest ESP32 / -C3 / -C6 boards can be a poor value. The cheap ones are often > 25.4mm wide so on a single standard breadboard the pins are only accessible on one side[0]. Also having recently been fighting CircuitPython running out of memory parsing a ~35KB response from a web service, boards with some PSRAM are real nice to have. And speaking of CircuitPython, ESP32-S3/S2 boards can run the UF2 bootloader for that Pi Pico-like experience. Waveshare's super compact ESP32-S3-Mini (or Zero) has become my first-to-grab. For 5 direct from their China site it works out to $7.35/ea pre-soldered with shipping or save a buck each for unsoldered. 2MB PSRAM and 13 usable GPIO. They also have less cheap -S3 boards in Arduino Nano ESP32, Pi Pico, and ESP32-S3-DevKitC-1[1] formats. And the oddball ESP32 One in Pi Zero format, using an ESP32 w/ off-die PSRAM. They sell on Amazon, too. A genuine Espressif ESP32-S2-DevKitC-1-N8R2 is $8 on Amazon, a relative bargain if you need it tomorrow and can live with one less LX7 core and no Bluetooth. [0] If you use the trick of spanning two breadboards side-by-side, that's an extra cost that could have gone towards a better smaller board. [1] Beware of cheap boards claiming to be copies of Espressif's 25.4mm board designs, many have been widened to ~28mm. Bad ESP32-S[3|2]-DevKit[C|M]-1 copies give themselves away by having enough room on top to put pin labels next to the pins instead of between them.