Skip to content

Hardware

Monitoring CO2 with ESPHome

I have done several posts about my smart home, and in particular about my instance of Home Assistant. In an effort to continuously improve this system, I have recently added CO2 level monitoring with a Pi Pico and an SCD30 CO2 sensor, which also monitors temperature and humidity.

I've been keen to see how the levels of CO2 affect my concentration and the stuffiness of the room, and with a big gauge in Home Assistant, my previously uncaring self can slowly start to become obsessed with the air quality in the office.

Protecting Leisure Batteries and Smartifying Campervans

Disclosure: Some of the links below are affiliate links. This means that, at zero cost to you, I will earn an affiliate commission if you click through the link and finalise a purchase. Learn more.

Three icons: battery on phone, bolt, and car battery in white on a blurry background of some electronics from my van
Protect your batteries!

This post is slightly different from the usual, as it's all to do with my campervan. As some of you might know, I enjoy camping and have converted a Renault Trafic into my very own campervan, equipped with all the mod-cons one might expect when camping in luxury.

One of the downsides to this luxury is that it all uses a lot of power... the lights draw about 10W all in, the inverter sips around 30W just at idle, and don't even get me started talking about the diesel heater. All this power has to come from somewhere, and for me, it's a leisure battery.

Testing SD Card Failure and Storage Reliability

Disclosure: Some of the links below are affiliate links. This means that, at zero cost to you, I will earn an affiliate commission if you click through the link and finalise a purchase. Learn more.

AI-generated grim reaper trying to take SD card
How long until your storage dies? (AI generated image)

I've been auditing the SD cards I have in use on various devices, including the data on them, and whether they are still reliable. I've recently freed up some of these SD cards for use in other projects, as I move to network booting my Raspberry Pis. Some of these SD cards are completely dead, I think because they have had lots of small writes, for things such as databases, which cause lots of stress on the underlying flash, and eventually cause it to fail. One example I can think of is a previous Pi running my Home Assistant, which randomly died one day and had lots of database activity.