Newbie here, in search of advice

Hello everyone,

I’m barely starting my home automation efforts at the moment and have successfully gotten an HA instance configured to retrieve data from zigbee devices and a webcam, in part through an MQTT broker (for presence detection from the camera).

Now, I’d like to get my “mi flora” devices to publish their data to my HA instance, as well as detect when our mobile phones and “mi band” wearables are in the house. I’d also be interested in retrieving data from some old LaCrosse weather sensors I have in the basement, if they till work.

For all this, I feel OMG should be the way to go, but I have absolutely no experience with hardware tinkering. From what I’ve read here, I believe my best bet would be an ESP with RF TX/RX and HM-10 modules. Am I indeed right ?

And, how does one go about connecting all of this together in a small and discreet package ? Do I need a breadboard or is there a better way past the experimentation phase (keeping in mind I don’t have much hardware, but I guess I could go to the local fablab) ? What should I use to power all this up (e.g. is an old USB charger usable to that end) ?

Thanks a lot for any advice, experience, help you might have time to provide !

Regards,

Hello,

Regarding BLE data retrieving the easier to go is a bare ESP32, HM10 is a little bit more complex to setup, nevertheless offers a better stability. As you are begining I think ESP32 could be a good choice.

You could use a prototyping PCB.

You should find indeed the help needed in your fablab.

Yes it should be enough.

I’m not sure we can decode this one, you will have to do some tests.

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