Edit: so it turns out that every hobby can be expensive if you do it long enough.

Also I love how you talk about your hobby as some addicts.

  • @choss@lemmy.ml
    12•10 months ago

    I would love to read about this $20 weather station! Do you maybe have a link?

    • 👍Maximum Derek👍English
      15•10 months ago

      Mine is pretty basic but is built on the shoulders of giants. Also that $20 was from pre-pandemic / pre-chip shortage prices. I’m guessing it’s more like $35 now, or maybe high $20s from ali express.

      I use Home Assistant for home automation. It has a now official addon called ESPHome for easily configuring esp devices and adding them to Home Assistant.

      I bought some cheap dev boards off amazon and thankfully they worked
    an esp8266 microcontroller with IC2 headers and a microusb port already onboard
    a bmp280 that measures temp, humidity, and barometric pressure
    a lux sensor with a plastic dome over the top
I soldered them together on a prototyping board

      All the components were supported by esphome, so I just needed to write the device config and then flash the devboard via esphome (in a web browser) over the built in usb.

      I 3d printed a housing for it, but you can also buy boxes. It needs airflow but also needs to stay dry. You can use a spray sealant to help avoid corrosion from ambient humidity. I skipped that step because I want to see how quickly it becomes problematic… and I should probably check on that.