[margalabargala]

Not the person you replied to, but someone who did the same thing:

Most of the things inside my house are ESP32 or zigbee things I put together myself. Things that go outdoors, though, I'm much more likely to purchase an off-the-shelf solution for longevity's sake. Especially if the whole point of the item is to be rained/snowed on, be left in direct sunlight, and so forth.

[sgt]

You can always build a tiny little house for your outside ESP and leave it outside.

[tlavoie]

Yeah, mine's under a deck, in a travel soap dish with holes drilled in it. Works great! Power for that one is one of those little solar panels with a micro-USB port on it, used for battery-powered security cameras.

[tomcam]

Love that! Battery backup for night & downcast days?

[tlavoie]

Yes, I have a 2200 mAh 18650 cell in there too, which the panel will mostly keep charged. In the darker, cloudier winter, I swap in a battery and recharge manually if it's not keeping up.

Running on an Adafruit ESP32 Feather board, it wakes up, sends its current readings over Wi-Fi to an MQTT service (that is on a Raspberry Pi), and goes back to sleep for 10 minutes. A little daemon running saves to Sqlite database, and another ESP32 unit inside has its own sensor, as well as displaying both (outside pulled from MQTT).

I've got some pictures and such, though haven't quite gotten to the much-belated blog post yet.

[tomcam]

> haven't quite gotten to the much-belated blog post yet.

Thanks for the preview. Looking forward to it.

[sgt]

Thought about getting a bigger solar panel for those cloudy days?

[tlavoie]

Cloudy season, more like it, BC coast. ;) Really, if I do it every couple weeks or so, it isn't a big deal. I charge the inside one periodically as well, as I don't leave it plugged in. For that one though, I added a last-update time; with the e-paper display, it's not immediately obvious when it has run out of juice.