PoE-Power Protection: The Hornet Nest Alarm Panel

January 4, 2025 by Heidi Ulrich 30 Comments

Have you ever thought of giving new buzz to outdated wired alarm systems or saving money while upgrading your home security? The Hornet Nest Alarm Panel, to which hacker [Patrick van Oosterwijck] contributes, does just that. Designed for domotics enthusiasts, it offers 42 sensor zones and seamless integration with Home Assistant and ESPHome. This open-source gem uses the wESP32 board, which combines an ESP32 with Ethernet and Power over Ethernet (PoE) for robust, reliable connectivity. Check out the Crowd Supply campaign for details.

So what makes this Hornet Nest special? Besides its hackable nature, it repurposes existing wired sensors, reducing waste and cost. Unlike WiFi-dependent solutions, the PoE-powered ESP32 ensures stable performance, even in hard-to-reach locations. The optional USB programming port is genius—it’s there when you need it but doesn’t clutter the board when you don’t. With its isolated circuits, long-cable safety, and smart Ethernet, WiFi, and Bluetooth combination, this system ticks every DIY box.

Hackaday has featured other DIY PoE-powered projects, offering more inspiration for smart automation enthusiasts.

Continue reading “PoE-Power Protection: The Hornet Nest Alarm Panel” →

ESP8266 Keeps Tabs On Wood Stove Temperature

December 15, 2024 by Tom Nardi 36 Comments

Wood heat offers unique advantages compared to more modern heating systems, especially in remote areas. But it also comes with its own challenges, namely, keeping the fire going at the optimum temperature. If it’s too cold you risk buildup in the chimney, but if you’ve got it stoked up more than necessary, you’ll end up burning through your wood faster.

To keep the fire in that sweet spot, [Jay] decided to put an ESP8266 and a thermocouple to work. Now, this might seem like an easy enough job at first, but things are complicated by the fact that the flue temperature above the stove lags considerably behind the temperature inside the stove. There’s also the fact that the top of the chimney will end up being much colder than the bottom.

Mounting the thermocouple in the flue pipe.

In an effort to get a more complete view of what’s happening, [Jay] plans on putting at least two thermocouples in the chimney. But as getting on the roof in December isn’t his idea of fun, for now, he’s starting with the lower one that’s mounted right above the stove. He popped a hole in the pipe to screw in a standard K-type probe, and tapped it a few times with the welder to make sure it wasn’t going anywhere.

From there, the thermocople connects to a MAX6675 amplifier, and then to the WeMos D1 Mini development board that’s been flashed with ESPHome. [Jay] provides the configuration file that will get the flue temperature into Home Assistant, as well as set up notifications for various temperature events. The whole thing goes into a 3D printed box, and gets mounted behind the stove.

This project is a great example on how you can get some real-world data into Home Assistant quickly and easily. In the future, [Jay] not only wants to add that second thermocouple, but also look into manipulating the stove’s air controls with a linear actuator. Here’s hoping we get an update as his woodstove learns some new tricks.

Make A Cheap Robot Mower Much Smarter

July 2, 2024 by Jenny List 15 Comments

The Parkside range of tools as sold in European Lidl stores may be reasonably priced, but it contains some products of far better quality than their modest cost would suggest. This means that Parkside hacking has become as much of a cottage industry as IKEA hacking, and they’re a firm favorite for modifications. [Lambertus] has taken a Parkside robot mower, and converted it from a relatively mundane device to a fully-connected smart robot, with the aid of an ESP8266.

The hardware is surprisingly simple, as all that’s really needed is a stop/go command. This can be readily found by hooking up to the input from the mower’s rain sensor, allowing the ESP to control its operation. Then there’s an accelerometer to allow it to count motion, and a hookup tot he battery to measure voltage. The firmware uses ESPHome, resulting in a mower now connected to home automation.

This isn’t the first time we’ve shown you someone upgrading the smarts on robot mover, and of course we’ve also taken a tour through the history of lawn mowers in general.

Bed Sensors Do More Than You’d Think

December 21, 2023 by Kristina Panos 24 Comments

Bed sensors do sort of sound like a gimmick — after all, who cares whether someone is occupying the bed? But if you think about it, that information is quite useful from a home automation standpoint. A person could do all sorts of things in this state, from ensuring the overhead lights in the room can’t come on, to turning off other smart devices that are likely not being used while both occupants are sleeping.

[The Home Automation Guy] presents a couple of ways of doing this, but both center around a fairly inexpensive pressure-sensing mat.

In the first method, he connects the pressure mat up to a Zigbee Aqara Leak Sensor, which conveniently has two terminals on the back to accept the wires from the pressure sensor. Then he simply connects it up to a Zigbee-compatible home assistant like the Aqara Hub.

In slightly harder mode, he forgoes the Aqara Leak Sensor and connects the pressure mat up to an ESP32 using a nifty screw terminal dev board. Then he sets up the sensor and all the desired actions in ESPHome. Of course, with an ESP32, it’s easy to add a second pressure mat for [Mrs. The Home Automation Guy]’s side of the bed.

Now, once they’ve both gone off to bed, the house goes into night mode — all the smart plugs, Sonos devices, and other things are powered down, and the alarm system is put into night mode. Be sure to check out the build video after the break.

Continue reading “Bed Sensors Do More Than You’d Think” →

2023 Hackaday Prize: A Smart Powermeter That You Actually Want

July 24, 2023 by Elliot Williams 19 Comments

[Jon] wanted to keep track of his home power use, but didn’t want to have to push his data up to some cloud service that’s just going to leave him high and dry in the future. So he went completely DIY.

This simple and sweet build is now in its third revision, and the refinements show. A first prototype was nothing more than an ESP32 with a screen and some current transformer (CT) sensors to read the current flowing in the wires in his breaker box. The next version added a PCB and a color screen, and the most recent version swapped up to eInk and a nice local power supply, all sized to fit a nice clear power box.

What’s really cute about this design is the use of standard ~~phono~~ headphone jacks to plug the CT sensors into, and the overall sweet combination of a local display and interactivity with [Jon]’s ESPHome-based home automation setup. This design isn’t super complicated, but it doesn’t need to be. It has one job, and it does it nicely. What more do you want?

If you’re interested in getting into ESPHome and/or home automation, check out this great ESPHome resource. It’s probably a lot easier than you think, and you can build your system out one module at a time. If you’re like us, once you get started, you’ll find it hard to stop until everything falls under your watchful eyes, if not your control.

Ventbot fans with 3D printed brackets and control circuit board with ESP32 breakout and multicolored 3D printed cases

Ventbots Are Fans Of HVAC And Home Automation

June 24, 2023 by Michael Shaub 21 Comments

[WJCarpenter] had a common HVAC problem; not all the rooms got to a comfortable temperature when the heater was working to warm up their home. As often happens with HVAC systems, the rooms farthest from the heat source and/or with less insulation needed a boost of heat in the winter and cooling in the summer too. While [WJCarpenter] is a self-reported software person, not a hardware person, you will enjoy going along on the journey to build some very capable vent boosters that require a mix of each.

There’s a great build log on hackaday.io here, but for those who need more of a proper set of instructions, there’s a step-by-step guide that should allow even a beginner hardware hacker to complete the project over on Instructables. There you’ll find everything you need to build ESPHome controlled, 3D printed, PC fan powered vent boosters. While they can be integrated into Home Assistant, we were interested to learn that ESPHome allows these to run stand-alone too, each using its own temperature and pressure sensor.

The many iterations of hardware and software show, resulting in thoughtful touches like a startup sequence that checks for several compatible temperature sensors and a board layout that accommodates different capacitor lead spacings. Along the way, [WJCarpenter] also graphed the noise level of different fans running at multiple speeds and the pressure sensor readings against the temperatures to see if they could be used as more reliable triggers for the fans. (spoiler, they weren’t) There are a bunch of other tips to find along the way, so we highly recommend going through all that [WJCarpenter] has shared if you want to build your own or just want some tips on how to convert a one-off project to something that a wider audience can adapt to their own needs.

See a video after the break that doesn’t show the whole project but includes footage of the start-up sequence that tests each fan’s tachometer and the customizable ramp-up and ramp-down settings. Continue reading “Ventbots Are Fans Of HVAC And Home Automation” →

DIY 3D Printed Rain Gauge Connects To Home Assistant

May 30, 2023 by Danie Conradie 17 Comments

Measuring local rainfall has real practical uses, especially in agriculture, but most of us will have to admit that it’s at least partly about drawing cool graphs on a screen. Whatever your motivation, you can build this open source electronic rain gauge designed by [Sebastian] of Smart Solutions for Home, and integrate it with Home Assistant.

This 3D printed rain gauge is of the ubiquitous tipping bucket type and uses a magnet and hall effect sensor to detect every time the bucket tips out. The sensor is soldered to a custom PCB with ESP32 configured using ESP Home. By keeping it in deep sleep most of the time and only waking up when the tip of the bucket, [Sebastian] estimates it can run about a year on four AA batteries, depending on rainfall. The hinge mechanism is adjustable to ensure that both buckets will tip with the same volume of water.

FDM 3D printed enclosures are not known for being waterproof, so [Sebastian] coated the PCB with varnish to protect it from moisture. This worked well enough that he could leave it running in a bowl of water for a few hours without any ill effects. The end result looks good and should be able to handle the outdoors for a long time.

Building a weather station is a popular DIY project. Some of the interesting varieties we’ve seen are powered by supercapacitors, show readings on antique analog dials and convert parking distance sensor kit into a wind gauge.

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