Blogs
Blogs
From ESP32 Weather Station to Home Security Monitor with HC-SR501 PIR Sensor
A few months ago I cobbled together a simple ESP32 weather station that dutifully reported temperature and humidity to my Home Assistant dashboard. It worked great until my cat decided the breadboard was a better bed than the couch. While the weather station slowly transitioned into a fur-covered sensor graveyard, I needed something else to do with the spare ESP32 Development Board Module I had lying around. That’s when the idea hit me: why not repurpose the same hardware I used for a weather station into a dead‑simple motion alert system?
Smart Weather Station ESP32: Control High-Voltage Appliances with a 2-Way Relay
Last winter my garage turned into a walk‑in freezer every night because I’d simply forget to flip the heater switch before bed. I wanted something that didn’t just display the temperature but actually did something with it—so I set out to build an ESP32 weather station that reads the room conditions and physically switches a high‑voltage appliance. The result is a small, Wi‑Fi‑connected brain that uses a 5V 2‑way relay module to control a space heater and an exhaust fan.
Build a Smart Weather Station with ESP32 and DHT11 OLED Display
Introduction I’ve always been slightly obsessed with knowing the exact temperature of my office. Not the outside weather — I can open a window for that — but the microclimate around my desk, where the Wi‑Fi router and the afternoon sun conspire to turn summer afternoons into a slow roast. A few months ago I threw together a bare DHT11 dangling from my ESP32, just spitting readings to the serial monitor.
ESP32 Weather Station Alert: DIY Touchless Alarm System with Infrared Obstacle Avoidance
Last winter, right after I had finally fine‑tuned my home‑brewed ESP32 weather station, our cat discovered the temperature sensor dangled from the windowsill and treated it as a feline punching bag. Within a week the outdoor humidity reading was permanently stuck at 99%—not because of a monsoon, but because the sensor had been batted onto the muddy ground one time too many. I needed a way to know when something (or someone) got within paw‑swiping range of my weather kit, without turning the project into a tripwire‑laden fortress.
Turn ESP32 Into a Smart Energy Meter with Home Assistant Integration
I’ve always been a bit obsessed with data, especially when it comes to understanding my home’s energy consumption. After getting hit with a surprisingly high electricity bill last winter, I decided it was time to stop guessing and start measuring. Commercial smart plugs with energy monitoring are great, but what if you want to monitor a whole circuit, like your kitchen or workshop? That’s when I decided to turn an ESP32 into a smart energy meter.
Make Your Garage Door Smart with ESP32 and Home Assistant
I’ve always had this nagging anxiety about whether I remembered to close the garage door. After driving halfway to work only to turn back and check (more than once, I’ll admit), I decided it was time for a solution. I wanted something more reliable than my memory and more integrated than a basic standalone smart opener. In this tutorial, I’ll show you how I used a cheap ESP32 board and some reed switches—the same type of sensor in door/window alarms—to create a smart garage door monitor that integrates seamlessly with Home Assistant.
Set Up Grafana Alerts and Notifications via Slack, Email, or Webhook
I’ll admit it: I used to be the person who constantly refreshed my Grafana dashboards, nervously watching a CPU usage graph creep upwards. It was like babysitting a pot of water, waiting for it to boil. This, of course, is not a scalable strategy for managing a smart home system or any observability stack. The whole point of having these beautiful dashboards is to be proactive, not reactive. That’s where Grafana alerts come in.
Control and Automate Air Purifier with ESP32 and Home Assistant Air Quality Index
I’ve always been a bit obsessive about air quality. Living in a city, you notice the difference a good air purifier makes, but I got tired of manually turning it on every time the pollution levels spiked. It felt, well, decidedly un-smart. So I set out to fix that by creating a system where my air purifier automatically kicks in when the Home Assistant Air Quality Index (AQI) reaches a certain threshold.
Using Labels and Relabeling in Prometheus for Clean, Scalable Metrics
I’ll admit it: the first time I looked at a raw Prometheus metrics endpoint, I felt a bit overwhelmed. It was like staring at a tangled ball of yarn, with metric names and labels sprawling in every direction. I was collecting thousands of time series, but finding the specific signal in the noise felt nearly impossible. That’s when I truly understood the power of labels and relabeling in Prometheus. They aren’t just decorative tags; they’re the fundamental tools for organizing your metrics universe.
Build a Room Occupancy Tracker with ESP32 and Ultrasonic Sensors
I’ve been tinkering with smart home automation for years, always looking for clever ways to make my home more responsive. Commercial room occupancy sensors work fine, but they’re expensive and often limited in functionality. After one too many instances of my smart lights turning off while I was still reading in my favorite armchair, I decided to build my own room occupancy tracker using an ESP32 and ultrasonic sensors. The beauty of this approach?