Easy Solar Outdoor Weather Sensor with ESPHome and Home Assistant

This will capture temperature, humidity, barometric pressure, and soil moisture. It uses a generic 5V 3W solar panel from Amazon (exact model no longer available), a 180mAh LiPo battery, a Seeed Xiao ESP32-C3, a BME280 sensor, and a capacitive soil moisture sensor.
YAML code for ESPHome, demo Lovelace code for Home Assistant, schematic, and STEP files for the enclosure here:
github.com/techdregs/Outdoor-...
Lovelace card requires:
github.com/kalkih/mini-graph-...
Videos that may be helpful understanding code and setup:
OTA Updates: • ESPHome OTA Updates fo...
Old soil moisture sensor: • Wi-fi Soil Moisture Se...
=== Timestamps ===
00:00 Introduction
00:16 Solar Panel
00:52 Parts
04:20 Enclosure and Internals
09:25 Two Compromises
14:38 Conclusion

[@TechDregs]

Make sure to watch the part on the compromises in the design. After a few more days of letting it run, I think the biggest source of temperature inaccuracy is simply the housing itself heating up in direct sun. That may be a deal-breaker for some, and I would recommend a redesign of the housing to build in some shade and different ventilation to get a better reading on air temperature. The current design is small, and I think come spring/summer it will probably heat up quite a bit.

[@raymondrichmond1]

Hey, thanks for posting this. It's given me some solid ideas for a possibly more panel-integrated option. Get a maybe 2 or 3 watt more plain panel and print a backing enclosure for it and mount the sensors in the shaded side (with some stand-off posts to isolate it more). The panel provides most of the rain protection and only a little epoxy should be needed to make it last quite a long time..... I think I would incorporate a charge controller, but the ETA4054 should be taking care of monitoring battery voltage and current itself, and not need the voltage divider for the mcu unless you are looking at going back to sleep if voltage too low. But if the battery has an internal protection chip that shouldn't be needed either. Not sure what that battery has however.

[@TechDregs]

I monitor the battery just for information purposes. Like, when I built this, I wasn't 100% sure that everything would play nice with each other, and I also wanted to see if my estimates on usage played out in the real world. Plus, I'm just kind of a data junkie... I just like knowing. :-)
What you're talking about with placing the enclosure on the back of the panel is what I had originally planned on doing, and I think it's a great idea.

[@raymondrichmond1]

@@TechDregs and THAT makes all the sense in the world. Yeah I get the desire for data. I try to reign myself in on that front wherever I can. :)

[@Dalius1000]

Under solar panel probobly soil in that spot are more dry then evrywhere else.

[@shanebekker]

Awesome project build. Did you have a link for the solar panel?

[@TechDregs]

Unfortunately, the one I used is no longer for sale. But if you look up 5V 3W panels with USB-C, they all look like they are pretty much the same.

[@Havox-]

Why do I spark myself when watching this, am I stupid?