small and cheap multi-sensor nodes for home automation

Posted on by Daniel Kirstenpfad

I had reported on my efforts to develop an indoor location tracking system previously. Back in 2017 when I started to work on this I only planned to utilize inexpensive EspressIf ESP32 SoCs to look for bluetooth beacons.

By Brian Krent – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0

In the time between I figured that I could, and should, also utilize the multiple digital and analog input/output pins this specific SoC offers. And what better to utilize it with then a range of sensors that also now could feed their measurements into an MQTT feed along with the bluetooth details.

And there is a whole lot of sensors that I’ve added. On a breadboard it looks like this:

So what do we have here:

  • Motion sensor
  • Temperature sensor
  • Humidity sensor
  • Light sensor
  • Barometric pressure sensor
  • and of course an RGB LED to show a status

The software I’ve done already and after 3 weeks of extensive testing it seems that it’s stable. I will release this eventually later in the process.

I’ve also found plastic cases that fill fit this amount of sensory over the sensor cases I had already bought for the ESP32 alone. For now I’ll close this article with some pictures.

The MQTT feed one of these nodes produces…

…and the Grafana dashboard I am using for this specific prototype device.

progressive web applications

Posted on by Daniel Kirstenpfad

These days even heise online is writing up about the wonders of PWA (progressive web applications).

PWA simply put is a standardized way to add some context to websites and package them up so they behave as much like a native mobile application. A mobile application that you are used to install onto your phone or tablet most likely using an app store of some sort.

The aim of PWA is to provide a framework and tooling so that the website is able to provide features like push notifications, background updates, offline modes and so on.

Very neat. I’ve just today have enabled the PWA mode of this website, so you’re now free to add it to your home screen. But fear not: You won’t be pestered with push notifications or any background stuff taking place. It’s merely a more convenient optional shortcut.