Home automation, ESPHome, solar monitoring and electronics projects by Adrian

Home Assistant — Setting Up for Advanced Projects Read This First The projects on this site involve editing Home Assistant configuration files, installing apps, and working with ESPHome devices. None of it is particularly difficult — but there are a handful of things you need to understand and set up before you start, or you will eventually break something and not know how to fix it. This page covers everything. Do it once, do it properly, and the rest becomes straightforward. ...

Victron MPPT Solar Monitoring via ESPHome BLE — No Cloud Required Overview Most Victron MPPT tutorials either use the official VRM cloud platform or a USB-to-serial cable. This guide shows a completely different approach: reading Victron SmartSolar MPPT 100/20 data directly via Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) using an ESP32 and ESPHome, feeding it into Home Assistant entirely locally — no Victron account, no cloud, no cables required. ...

Calibrating a Humidity Sensor with Saturated Salt Solution — ASTM E104 Method Why Calibrate? The music room contains a pair of B&W Matrix 800 loudspeakers — the original flagship model from 1987. At 110kg each, with crossovers, drive units, and cabinet materials that are no longer manufactured, they are effectively irreplaceable. Keeping them in good condition over decades requires stable humidity. Too dry and surrounds crack, spiders stiffen, and wooden cabinet joints open. Too damp and cones absorb moisture, crossover components corrode, ferrofluid in the tweeters degrades. And most importantly with this pair, the nickel plated magnet assemblies oxidise, binding the voice coils in the coil gap. This has already killed one of the very rare drivers. ...

Reviving a Weather Underground Station with Home Assistant and ESPHome Station IBRIGHTO3 had been dormant for years. Reviving it required no dedicated weather station hardware — just sensors already deployed around the house, a few template conversions in Home Assistant, and a REST command firing every five minutes. Hardware The station currently reports three parameters: Temperature and humidity — AirGradient O-1PS outdoor sensor (SHT40), reporting via MQTT to HA Barometric pressure — DPS310 sensor on an ESP32-C6, integrated via ESPHome native API The DPS310 is a good choice for pressure — it is a high-resolution MEMS barometer with better temperature compensation than the commonly used BME280, and ESPHome has native support for it. ...

Running a Home Server and Network Stack from 12V Solar Overview The home automation and server infrastructure here runs directly from the 12V LiFePO4 solar battery bank rather than from mains via inverter. This keeps the critical systems online during grid outages and eliminates inverter losses for loads that do not need 240V AC. The load list: Synology NAS — file server, HA backups, Plex, email server, web server — running 24/7 for 13 years WiFi 7 router ADSL modem Raspberry Pi 5 (Home Assistant) Amazon Echo Several ESP32 sensor and display boards Motion-activated lighting throughout the house The office — Mac Mini, two screens, active speakers at around 140W — runs from the Victron Phoenix 12/375 pure sine inverter. In summer this runs most days from solar. In winter it is an occasional load. ...

What Is It? The board sold on AliExpress as “ESP32 Arduino LVGL WIFI&Bluetooth Development Board 2.8" 240×320 Smart Display Screen with Touch WROOM” has become something of a community favourite. It is widely known as the CYD — Cheap Yellow Display — named for its yellow PCB. For under £10 delivered it gives you: ESP32-WROOM-32 (dual core, 240MHz, 4MB flash) ILI9341 2.8" TFT LCD, 240×320 pixels, 16-bit colour XPT2046 resistive touchscreen RGB LED LDR light sensor SD card slot USB-C programming and power The display quality is genuinely impressive for the price. It ships running an LVGL demo that shows what the hardware is capable of. ESPHome support is solid and well documented. ...

Going Local: Migrating Sonoff Zigbee from eWeLink Cloud to Z2M Using Zigbee2MQTT (Z2M) for fully local Zigbee control The Problem with Cloud Zigbee Running Sonoff Zigbee devices through eWeLink and Home Assistant means every automation trigger passes through Sonoff’s servers and back. It works well enough under normal conditions, but introduces a dependency on a third-party cloud that is entirely outside your control. When that cloud has problems, your automations stop responding. ...

LilyGO TTGO T-Display Solar Monitor with ESPHome Overview The LilyGO TTGO T-Display is a compact ESP32 board with a built-in 1.14" ST7789V colour TFT display. This guide covers flashing it for the first time and configuring it with ESPHome to display live solar and house power data — pulling Victron MPPT figures from MQTT and house consumption from Home Assistant. ...

Flashing Sonoff Devices with ESPHome — Local Control, No Cloud Why Flash Them? Sonoff devices come from the factory running eWeLink firmware that requires a cloud connection to function. Your automations go out to Sonoff’s servers and come back. If their servers go down, or your internet goes down, your devices stop responding. They also collect data about your usage. Flashing with ESPHome replaces the factory firmware with your own. The device connects directly to Home Assistant on your local network — no cloud, no third party servers, no internet required. Response times drop from seconds to milliseconds and you have full control over exactly what the device does. ...