smart home News - CNX Software - Embedded Systems News

April 26, 2025April 26, 2025 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 4 Comments

Air Lab is a portable Wi-Fi & Bluetooth LE air quality monitor with an e-paper touchscreen display (Crowdfunding)

Networked Artifacts’ Air Lab is a portable air quality monitor based on ESP32-S3 Wi-Fi & Bluetooth LE wireless SoC, equipped with an e-paper touchscreen display, and plenty of sensors to measure CO2, temperature, relative humidity, air pollutants (VOC, NOx), and atmospheric pressure. The Air Lab ships with a rechargeable 1,500 mAh battery that will be good for about 21 days on a charge in passive mode (taking measurements every minute), and you can also power it over its USB-C ports. It includes a debug port for people wanting to change the firmware, and a GPIO header to connect additional sensors if required. Data can be visualized on the e-paper display or transmitted over BLE or MQTT for integration with Home Assistant. The company also provides a CSV export function and a web-based dashboard for data visualization. Air Lab specifications: Main module – ESP32-S3 module with PCB antenna for 2.4GHz WiFi […]

April 24, 2025 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 3 Comments

ESPuno Pi Zero ESP32-C6 board takes up to 60V DC input, offers RS-485 interface (Crowdfunding)

ESPuno Pi Zero is a Raspberry Pi Zero-sized board based on an ESP32-C6-MINI-1 WiFI 6, BLE, and 802.15.4 wireless module and an SMPS that allows up to 60V DC input via a 2-pin terminal block. The board also features two USB-C ports, one connected to the ESP32-C6 and the other to a CH343P USB-to-serial chip, a 40-pin GPIO header, a Grove connector, a 3-pin terminal block for RS-485, DMX, Profibus, and a few buttons and LEDs. ESPuno Pi Zero specifications: ESP32-C6-MINI-1-N4 or ESP32-C6-MINI-1U-N4 SoC – Espressif Systems ESP32-C6 single-core 32-bit RISC-V clocked up to 160 MHz 320KB ROM, 512KB SRAM, low-power RISC-V core @ up to 20 MHz CPU Single-core 32-bit RISC-V clocked up to 160 MHz Low-power RISC-V core @ up to 20 MHz Memory/Storage – 320KB ROM, 512KB SRAM Wireless – 2.4 GHz WiFi 6, Bluetooth 5.0, and 802.15.4 radio (for Thread/Zigbee) Storage – 4MB flash Antenna ESP32-C6-MINI-1-N4 […]

April 21, 2025April 21, 2025 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

ANAVI Miracle Emitter – A WiFi and BLE RGB LED controller compatible with Home Assistant, WLED firmware (Crowdfunding)

ANAVI Miracle Emitter is an open-source hardware ESP32-C3 WiFi and BLE controller designed to control 5V addressable RGB LED strips, which works with Home Assistant over MQTT and also supports the popular WLED firmware to easily control the LED strip through a web interface. It also features four I2C expansion headers for sensors and a small OLED display, a UART header, and a GPIO header. It’s an update to Leon ANAVI’s Miracle Controller introduced in 2019 with an ESP8266. A lot of things have changed since then, and it’s gotten easier than ever to control RGB LED strips using open-source software and firmware. ANAVI Miracle Emitter specifications: Wireless Module – Seeed Studio XIAO ESP32C3 Wireless MCU – Espressif Systems ESP32-C3 single-core RISC-V microcontroller @ 160 MHz with 400KB SRAM, 384KB ROM, 4MB flash, Wi-Fi 4 & Bluetooth LE 5.0 connectivity Antenna – External u.FL antenna USB – USB Type-C port […]

April 15, 2025April 15, 2025 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 5 Comments

SONOFF SNZB-02LD and SNZB-02WD IP65-rated Zigbee LCD Smart thermometers work with liquids or outdoors

SONOFF SNZB-02LD IP65 Zigbee LCD Thermometer

ITEAD has introduced two new SONOFF devices: the IP65-rated SNZB-02LD and SNZB-02WD Zigbee 3.0 LCD Smart thermometers designed to work in liquids or enclosed spaces such as bathtubs or refrigerators, or outdoors in gardens or other humid environments, respectively. Both devices look similar and can measure temperature with +/- 0.5°C accuracy, but the SONOFF SNZB-02LD model ships with a 1.5m long probe to measure the temperature of liquids in a pool, a bathtub, or fermentation vessel (for beer or wine making), as well as in refrigerators. On the other end, the SNZB-02WD features a built-in temperature and humidity sensor. SONOFF SNZB-02WD/LD specifications: MCU – Telink TLSR8656F512ET32 (part of the TSL8656 family – See PDF datasheet ) Zigbee/RF4CE SoC with 32-bit RISC MCU, 64kB SRAM, 512kB internal Flash Display – 2.2-inch LCD Wireless – Zibgee 3.0 (802.15.4 radio on TSL8656) Temperature and Humidity sensor SNZB-02WD (internal) Temperature Range – -20°C to […]

April 13, 2025April 14, 2025 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 8 Comments

Battery-powered Seeed Studio IoT Button features ESP32-C6 SoC, supports ESPHome or Zigbee firmware

Seeed Studio IoT Button is an inexpensive ESP32-C6 button powered by a rechargeable 18650 battery and designed to easily and quickly control Smart Home devices over WiFi 6 or Zigbee wireless protocol. It will be especially handy to Home Assistant users since the device is pre-flashed with ESPHome firmware for easy integration (over WiFi), and the company also provides a Zigbee firmware for Zigbee Home Assistant (ZHA) integration. The hardware is pretty basic with a button, three LEDs, and a USB-C port for charging the replaceable 18650 battery. Seeed Studio IoT Button specifications: SoC – ESP32-C6FH4 CPU Single-core 32-bit RISC-V clocked up to 160 MHz Low-power RISC-V core @ up to 20 MHz Memory – 512KB SRAM, 16KB low-power SRAM Storage – 320KB ROM, 4MB flash Wireless – 2.4 GHz WiFi 6, Bluetooth 5.0 LE/Mesh (somehow not used here), 802.15.4 radio for Zigbee 3.0 and Thread. Matter compatible. USB – […]

April 4, 2025 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 5 Comments

Seeed Studio XIAO 7.5″ ePaper panel supports ESPHome firmware, Arduino programming

Seeed Studio XIAO 7.5″ ePaper Panel interfaces an XIAO ESP32-C3 USB-C board and mainly targets the Smart Home market with support for ESPHome, but the monochrome ePaper display is also programmable with the Arduino IDE for a wider range of applications. The display offers a resolution of 800×400 and includes a 2,000mAh battery good for three months per charge with updates every 6 hours. Seeed Studio says the display can operate in the -40°C to 85°C temperature range, so it would be suitable for outdoor use as long as it’s not exposed to rain or dust. The USB-C port of the ESP32-C3 module and the Boot and Reset buttons are easily accessible for charging the display and programming it. XIAO 7.5″ ePaper Panel specifications: Wireless module – XIAO ESP32C3 SoC – Espressif Systems ESP32-C3 CPU – Single-core RISC-V microcontroller @ 160 MHz Memory/Storage – 400KB SRAM, 384KB ROM, 4MB flash […]

April 3, 2025 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 2 Comments

WattWise – A command line tool for smart power plugs with energy monitoring

Smart Power plugs help users monitor their appliances’ power consumption, and they’d usually check measurements in a mobile app or a web dashboard. Naveen was not satisfied with this workflow while using a TP-link Kasa EP25 Smart Plug to monitor his LLM workstation’s power consumption. So he wrote the WattWise command-line interface (CLI) for power monitoring smart plugs to allow him to throttle his power-hungry, dual AMD Ryzen EPYC 7C13 workstation following his utility’s Time of Use (ToU) pricing in order to lower his electric bill. The Python tool pulls power usage data from smart plugs directly or through Home Assistant and presents it in a neat terminal-based UI. Key features: Real-time power monitoring with wattage and current display Color-coded power values (green < 300W, yellow 300-1200W, red > 1200W) Historical consumption charts directly in the terminal Automatic CPU/GPU throttling based on time-of-use electricity pricing Configurable power thresholds and performance […]

April 1, 2025 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 6 Comments

ESP LowCode Matter splits system and application firmware for simpler ESP32 device development

Espressif released the ESP ZeroCode web application in the summer of 2023 to create custom Matter-certifiable firmware for ESP32 targets. However, if your application requires some more customization, but you don’t have the budget or need for a software engineering team, the company has now launched ESP LowCode Matter. It retains most of the simplicity of ESP ZeroCode, but also provides the ability to further customize the application without having to use the ESP Matter SDK, which requires more advanced coding skills to build your own firmware. The ESP LowCode Matter divides firmware into two components to simplify the development, maintenance, and certification process: System Firmware – Managed by Espressif, handling the Matter protocol, wireless stacks, OTA updates, and security management. Application Firmware – Developed by device makers, focusing on hardware interfacing, event and state indication, and user interaction. Development is done right in the web browser thanks to VS […]