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Ask HN: What have you built with ESPHome, ESP8266 or similar hardware

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Re: Ask HN: What have you built with ESPHome, ESP8266 or similar hardware

#91

Post by stavros »

heyitsguay wrote: post #88
stavros wrote: post #74

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…

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?

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?

Re: Ask HN: What have you built with ESPHome, ESP8266 or similar hardware

#93

Post by nickt »

sho_hn wrote: post #40
sp0d3rmun wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This looks amazing! Do you have a guide? Would love to recreate this!

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!

I’m not sure that’s what DIY means!

Congrats on the little ‘un!

Re: Ask HN: What have you built with ESPHome, ESP8266 or similar hardware

#94

Post by Shish2k »

I made a glowy box that takes up 1U in my homelab rack and represents my home internet reliability - an esp32c3 (risc-v, experimenting with the rust support) 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)

Re: Ask HN: What have you built with ESPHome, ESP8266 or similar hardware

#96

Post by stavros »

deivid wrote: post #87

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 a…

Very nice! I've wanted the "on air" sign too, basing it on mic/camera usage is a great idea.

Re: Ask HN: What have you built with ESPHome, ESP8266 or similar hardware

#97

Post by conductr »

I got kind of petty and wanted to avoid the $40-50/month my wife spends on Pura scent refills. We also have multiple units in house, and I think they’re ugly (look like smoke alarms on wall). So I made a device to add scent juice in our HVAC system directly. It’s not as controllable, which hasn’t been a problem for us, but it is a more true full home experience which has been really nice actually.

Re: Ask HN: What have you built with ESPHome, ESP8266 or similar hardware

#98

Post by nathan_f77 »

I installed a custom firmware on my ESP32-powered smart kettle and made it respond with the HTTP status code "418 I'm a teapot". [1]

I used an ESP32 to automate my kitchen rangehood light and fan [2].

I've flashed ESPHome on few smart outlets and powerboards. A lot of WiFi enabled devices that you buy in stores are actually white-labelled "Tuya" products, and there's a big community effort to hack the ESP32 chips and run your own custom firmware, such as ESPHome and Tasmota. Most off-the-shelf WiFi products don't work without the manufacturer's cloud services and apps. ESPHome means that everything works locally and it doesn't need to make any requests to the public internet.

I have KC868-AG IR/RF hubs in every room [3]. I found an awesome supplier on AliExpress who builds products specifically for ESPHome. They're quite expensive but they work really well. I mainly use them to control our air conditioners. I use one in my workshop to control an old CRT TV. And I also use them as "Bluetooth Proxies" [4] for Home Assistant. This means that I don't have to worry about range for bluetooth devices (temp/humidity sensors, switchbot, and LPG gas tank sensor.)

I run WLED [5] to control a few LED strips. I like using QuinLED controllers [6], which have an ESP32 chip plus some extra hardware for powering LEDs. I have one behind my desk in my office, and one on a board gaming table. I use Zigbee LED controllers for most of my LED lighting, but I like all the effects and patterns you can do with WLED.

I have a lot of ESP32 boards around my house running ESPresense [7]. They track the signals from our phones and watches and try to figure out which rooms are occupied, so the timers don't automatically turn off the lights. I use the ESPresense-companion app, which works ok, but I've been wanting to experiment with AI to make it more reliable.

[1] https://madebynathan.com/2021/08/19/kogan-smart-kettle/

[2] https://madebynathan.com/posts/2022-09-30-automating-my-kitc...

[3] https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005003833775634.html?spm=a2...

[4] https://esphome.io/components/bluetooth_proxy.html

[5] https://kno.wled.ge/

[6] https://quinled.info/

[7] https://espresense.com/

[8] https://github.com/ESPresense/ESPresense-companion

Re: Ask HN: What have you built with ESPHome, ESP8266 or similar hardware

#99

Post by heyitsguay »

stavros wrote: post #91
heyitsguay wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

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?

Well, for example, my (sighted) cats have a toy that spins a wand in a circle, but does so at a constant speed for a few minutes then turns off. I'd like to build one that moves in less predictable patterns, sporadically, over a longer period of time, without using much battery while not moving.

The hardware components aren't that hard to assemble, the programming is easy, but I'm at a loss with where to begin for building a simple housing where a motor can attach with a wand mounted to it. I'm sure it's very basic fabrication stuff, I just don't know where to begin.

Re: Ask HN: What have you built with ESPHome, ESP8266 or similar hardware

#100

Post by stavros »

heyitsguay wrote: post #99
stavros wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Well, for example, my (sighted) cats have a toy that spins a wand in a circle, but does so at a constant speed for a few minutes then turns off. I'd like to build one that moves in less predictable patterns, sporadically, over a longer period of time, without using much battery while not moving. The hardware components aren't that hard to assemble, the programming is easy, but I'm at a loss with where to begin for bu…

Can you not use the existing toy and modulate its motor how you like it? That's my first option, and my second option is to design and 3D print something. The latter isn't that hard to learn either, you could make something decent in a few hours.
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