A No-Code Smart Home Sensor

Have you got 10 minutes and 10 dollars? Then you have everything you need to build your own custom smart home sensor. This may not be news to the experienced electronics hobbyist, but for those just getting started, it may come as quite a surprise. Getting started with smart home device development is actually very simple these days.

YouTuber FEATURE, new to smart home development, worked out the details of building a simple IoT sensor to give us a rundown of the process. FEATURE started by selecting a Seeed Studio XIAO ESP32C6 development board. You can pick one up for a few bucks, yet they come equipped with a powerful ESP32-C6 microcontroller with a built-in Wi-Fi radio. You can add anything you like to this board via its GPIO pins, but FEATURE went with an Adafruit SHT3C temperature and humidity sensor breakout board.

Just a few jumper wires had to be hooked up to complete the hardware build. But this is where most beginners start getting confused — the software side of the equation. Writing the code and flashing the microcontroller can be difficult for the new hobbyist, but FEATURE took a different approach that makes things simpler.

By using ESPHome with Home Assistant, FEATURE could avoid coding and instead create a simple configuration file. After specifying the type of sensor, the interface, the GPIO pins used, and a few other parameters, ESPHome will generate and flash the firmware to the board for you — just plug in a USB cable and click the button.

With that, the device sends periodic temperature and humidity measurements to Home Assistant via Wi-Fi. The data can be viewed and analyzed over time right in the standard Home Assistant interface.

It’s not as hard as you thought, is it? If you're ready to give it a try, watch the video and build along with FEATURE. You’ll be up and running in 10 minutes flat.