Build a network of ("edge") humidity sensors using Raspberry Pis with SenseHats and additional cheaper sensors
For our house, I want to make sure I can track the effectiveness of regularly ventilating the rooms by adding humidity sensors and tracking the measurements over time.
We've already started with this little project:
https://github.com/benediktwerner/humidity-logger
Goal for this Hackweek
The setup we built over the holidays works just fine, but there are a few practical issues and a few stretch goals I'd have:
With a Raspberry Pi plus the Sense Hat, a single sensor is pretty expensive and over-specced. Using a Raspberry Pi as the master is ok (especially as I already have two with two Sense Hats), but I'd like to add extra sensors that can be connected wirelessly directly to one of the Raspberry Pis using Bluetooth or WiFi. Those could either be ready to go or a combination of "bare" sensor and a cheap board like the Raspberry Pico W or a similar board (e.g., based on the ESP32).
Currently, there's only a Grafana dashboard with a "forever" history. Would love to add extra reporting, e.g., sending alerts when certain humidity thresholds are exceeded, archiving older data.
None of the setup is "SUSEfied" (using SUSE Linux images, k3s, Rancher, ...). I'd love to change that, so that the setup can be used as a showcase for SUSE Edge. The stretch goal would be to make the SUSE version at least as easy to use as the current Raspberry Pi OS setup.
I'm looking for contributors who want to hack on either the hardware part (building an affordable Bluetooth or WiFi humidity/temperature sensor from components) or the SUSEfied software stack or both.
The software stack has many areas to work on, from building out-of-the box containers that can be deployed from Rancher to improving the Grafana dashboards.
Resources
- https://github.com/benediktwerner/humidity-logger
- https://www.raspberrypi.com/products/sense-hat/
- https://www.raspberrypi.com/documentation/microcontrollers/raspberry-pi-pico.html
- https://community.ibm.com/community/user/cloud/blogs/alexei-karve/2022/05/08/microshift-15
Looking for hackers with the skills:
raspberrypi esp32 microos k3s rancher elemental sensors grafana influxdb containers helm microcontroller edge
This project is part of:
Hack Week 22
Activity
Comments
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over 2 years ago by idefx | Reply
Hello! Have you check on the Home Assistant and ESPHome projects?
I run Home Assistant on a k3s cluster, with 2 raspberry pi 4 and 2 intel low-power (a VM inside a NAS and a NUC). Everything is on SLE Micro, and I use Rancher for the management of the cluster, and longhorn for persistent data. For the sensor part, I have a couple of Arduino m5 atoms lite. They support a variety of sensors, and with ESPHome, it is super easy to connect them to Home Assistant. Then you can design automations, mobile notification, etc. from Home Assistant, and even plug it to other services so you get a phone call if something goes wrong, for example.
Don't hesitate to reach out to me if you want to discuss this!
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over 2 years ago by joachimwerner | Reply
Thanks for the great pointers! We started off with a much smaller scope (no home automation, really just data gathering and visualisation), but it makes perfect sense to think of it in the context of home assistant for the future (e.g., so that a smart thermostat automatically shuts down the heating in the room when it's being ventilated). Will certainly get back to you with some questions.
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over 2 years ago by joachimwerner | Reply
Found this on how to get the Sense Hat to work on openSUSE: https://community.ibm.com/community/user/cloud/blogs/alexei-karve/2022/05/08/microshift-15
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over 2 years ago by gpathak | Reply
Hi @joachimwerner For adding extra sensors, I found out that it can be done with DHT22 and ESP8266. Some information about interfacing DHT22 with ESP8266 can be found here: Getting Started With the ESP8266 and DHT22 Sensor
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over 2 years ago by bigironman | Reply
An alternative solution might be using a Raspberry Pi Pico W with MicroPython and BME280 sensor (temperature, humidity, pressure). It is easy to program and you can integrate it into nearly everything via Wifi. I'm using it in combination with Home Assistant and MQTT.
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