Earlier quoted context omitted.
What was your stack like for data collection and visualization?
Ditto! I’d also love to know what is being used for the visualizations.
Not OP but the screenshot looks identical to Grafana.
Building an occupancy sensor with a $5 ESP32 and a serverless DB
121–130 of 221 posts
Re: Building an occupancy sensor with a $5 ESP32 and a serverless DB
#122How do people "productize" their ESP32 projects? (Edit: not talking about mass-producing something, I just want a self-contained unit rather than a board with a bunch of wires sticking out) I see a lot of pages where they show some bare-looking board, but in the real world you want to package that up. If you're a software guy like me, you would likely prefer to pay a bit extra to just have that tidied up for you rath…
If you're handy with wood, you use wood.
If you've got a 3d printer, you make a 3d print.
If you're more of a acrylic guy, then you take your laser-cutter, cut out some shapes, drill a few holes and bam you've got a box.
If you got none of these and just want a bare-necessities box, you use an Altoids Tin that costs about $25 for 12 tins... and they have these kinda useless mints in them though. So you buy those boxes, then you throw away the mints and shove your project in there.
If you want slightly better than the Altoids tin, you buy a Hammon Enclosure. (https://www.hammfg.com/electronics/small-case).
If you're like me, you wrap it in electrical tape, and then wrap that in duct tape or something. Maybe color on it with permanent marker.
Re: Building an occupancy sensor with a $5 ESP32 and a serverless DB
#123Since this was done by a student at a university, and at some level this involves tracking people, that's an opportunity to ask a professor about what human subjects protocols you'd need if this was research. (A professor might be easier to ask than the university human subjects board -- who might refuse to talk with you because this isn't under their jurisdiction, or might get alarmed because you didn't talk with th…
People lie to their IRBs all the time, unfortunately.
Re: Building an occupancy sensor with a $5 ESP32 and a serverless DB
#124Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have a smartwatch and airpods, turning off Bluetooth would cause both not to work. I'm more surprised that anyone ever turns it off, battery use is negligible compared to the cellular modem as I browse the web/listen to music.
I use Bluetooth maybe once or twice a year because I don't want to be tracked everwhere. Wired headphones. Phone in airplane mode much of the day. I suppose I am a privacy outlier, and I'm also not a slave responding to calls/texts.
> and I'm also not a slave responding to calls/texts.
You do you, but I enjoy talking with my friends and family and I don't see responding to them as "slavery".
Re: Building an occupancy sensor with a $5 ESP32 and a serverless DB
#125My alarm clock consists of an ESP32 and has a somewhat big LED-array connected to it (powered by a transistor), a buzzer and a PIR sensor. It doesn't show the time, but buzzes (and flashes) and takes care of slowly brightening the room, or at night slowly dimming it into darkness some time after all the lights have been turned off. One added benefit I discovered afterwards is that even though the AP is not between me…
What was your stack like for data collection and visualization?
Sent via UDP to a small custom Python server which feeds it into InfluxDB, then Grafana for visualization.
Re: Building an occupancy sensor with a $5 ESP32 and a serverless DB
#126Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's a great point. I have experience w/ Arduino and have made a carrier board one time [1], but am not familiar with full custom PCB + MCU designs. Do you have any suggestions on where to get started for someone with my medium level of experience here? And also, how difficult would you anticipate a custom MCU to be? [1] -- https://zachbellay.com/projects/odaf/#iteration-3-phase-2-wi...
A custom MCU+pcb is at least 3 months work: downloading an design for an FPGA, testing it, using openlane to make an custom chip, taping it out, writting boot code and the main loop ( I would do that in assembly, much simpler than using C and some vendors library). The big issue is taping it out to a chip FAB, around $25K, see my comment below. I would get started with an off the shelf MCU with good documentation, wr…
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Re: Building an occupancy sensor with a $5 ESP32 and a serverless DB
#127I am also considering selling it to brick-and-mortar businesses that want to measure occupancy trends.
They've been able to do that long before invasive solutions like this, or computers, even existed --- turnstiles.
Re: Building an occupancy sensor with a $5 ESP32 and a serverless DB
#128Earlier quoted context omitted.
no, the ESP32 is a SoC, a bunch of chips in a package on a PCB. not a bare microcontroller chip. It is already a product with several resellers: ip, fab, packaging, exporter, distributor, retailer and a very high profit overhead of at least 2.7 times the costprice
You're absolutely wrong on a number of points. A SoC stands for "system on a chip", it refers to a single die (if you want to get pedantic, there are multi-die packages but this does not apply here) package, a "bare chip" if you will. https://www.espressif.com/en/products/socs/esp32 The ESP32 is a SoC. It's available in QFN packaging (Quad Flat Pak No Lead). The ESP32 is available included with a number of "modules"…
There are some nice images of the ESP32 die here https://zeptobars.com/en/read/Espressif-ESP32-Wi-Fi-Bluetoot... and yes does not look like a multi die chip.
Re: Building an occupancy sensor with a $5 ESP32 and a serverless DB
#129How do people "productize" their ESP32 projects? (Edit: not talking about mass-producing something, I just want a self-contained unit rather than a board with a bunch of wires sticking out) I see a lot of pages where they show some bare-looking board, but in the real world you want to package that up. If you're a software guy like me, you would likely prefer to pay a bit extra to just have that tidied up for you rath…
You shouldn't productise anything with ESP32, its just an overprized bloated hobby pcb. See my comment below on how to productize this: use a 4 cent off the shelf microcontroller on a 10 cent pcb or much better: make a custom chip with all the sensors on board but with $25K minimum Capex but tiny Opex
This is silly and reductive. You make different design for manufacturing choices at different steps of product development and volume.
In some cases, you may luck out and find that a widely available dev board is actually a really good match for your needs, in which case, run with it. You'll cut out a lot of NRE and get your product in customers hands faster. Once you've shown that you can sell in volume, do a DFM pass for V2 to minimize cost. OP probably fits this case, as all they need is Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, depending on their eventual power solution.
If you find that you're taking a dev board and soldering a lot of extra components to it, then I agree, you want to move to a custom PCB before doing any real volume. But you still might make a dozen first cuts with this and a 3d printed case to see how some product beta testers respond.
Re: Building an occupancy sensor with a $5 ESP32 and a serverless DB
#130Ultra wide band can be used to detect tiny movements of humans in a room. It can detect a finger twitching from several meters away. https://www.eenewseurope.com/en/uwb-human-sensor-uses-impuls...
Aqara makes a mmWave presence sensor https://www.aqara.com/us/product/presence-sensor-fp2