Plug-in enclosure for ESP8266 / ESP32 devices (EU)

Want to make one for yourself? Check out the full build guide over on my blog!

This past year I have become *completely* obsessed with HomeAssistant, adding a number of sensors and smart products all over our house all controlled through HomeAssistant (from the Everything Presence One mmWave sensor in my office to the Roborock vaccuum and even our solar system). However, due to the way our underfloor heating is setup, we have no thermostats and as such, no real way to monitor the temperature of our home. My wife was looking into buying a bunch of cheap battery powered LCD displays, but of course, that wasn't happening on my watch!

So I started looking into building some smart sensors that we could use around the house to monitor temperature and humidity. There are lots of options using Zigbee and Z-wave, but they are mostly battery powered and I hate changing batteries (my ADHD brain will put it off for weeks). They also lack flexibility - they do what the manufacturer designed them to do and nothing more.

So with my wife's approval, I started looking into cheap DIY solutions that can use ESPHome and sure enough, there are loads of solutions out there. Unfortunately, they all look something like this:

These are fine if you can hide them away, but doesn't work in all situations and has low wife approval factor (also when my wife sees things like this she gets stressed that I'm going to burn the house down). Of course, you can shove the whole lot in a project box or disguise it to look like an ornament but even that still requires running cables.

So I started thinking if it would be possible to build a wall wart with a built in ESP-type microcontroller and a small prototyping area for adding sensors and sure, with the right manufacturing partner, this is totally possible but I'm going through some stuff right now and didn't want to be looking into big manufacturing runs and financial commitments just now. So... I did the next best thing.

I designed a slim, 3d printable enclosure that wraps around a €2 USB phone charger that gives you a ton of flexibility to make your own plug-in ESPHome devices without breaking the bank and without looking looking too much like a DIY project!

To none-Europeans, I'm sorry this is designed for an EU specific plug, by all means you are welcome to run with this idea and create versions for your own countries (if you do, post them as a remix and I will link them here!).

Want to make one for yourself? Check out the full build guide over on my blog!