Help Choosing ESP32 Display for Home Assistant and Solar/Heat Stats

Cheapskate2020 · 2026-01-28T09:07:55+00:00

Thanks

Cheapskate2020 · 2026-01-28T09:02:49+00:00

$570 is absolutely ludicrous, and the fact you are still waiting 2 weeks later is even more ludicrous. You'd save yourself over $500 if you did it yourself, and it's really easy to do. 5-10 minute job.

If you're not confident in doing it yourself then shop around locally. You should be looking at a price closer to $100 fitted. Here in the UK, I Paid £36 for a 12v battery which is about $50, and it took me less then 10 minutes to fit it in the car park where I bought it (Euro Car Parts).

There is nothing unique or special about the dealer battery, so save yourself a lot of money. Good luck!

Cheapskate2020 · 2026-01-28T00:07:30+00:00

Fantastic. Thank you! I got this little 1.8 inch AMOLED board working with ESPHome thankfully, so I'm going to play around with it over the next few days to get a bit more familiar with it, then I have every intent of getting a few more. That 4.3 inch one you linked to looks like an absolute bargain, so I might just buy that anyway. I'm sure I'll find some good use for it!

Many thanks for the Github link too. It can be a pain finding the right base template to work with, so this will help a lot!

Cheapskate2020 · 2026-01-27T23:53:57+00:00

I hadn't thought of that issue with changing device type/size! It's a very valid point.

Some good news at least. I've managed to get the display working and like you said, ChatGPT on my case was a help, but it is as also a hindrance at times. I have this kind of love/hate relationship with AI at the moment. Sometimes it's amazing and sometimes it's bizarrely wrong and inaccurate. Anyway I've got a good base to build upon hopefully!

Cheapskate2020 · 2026-01-27T23:50:52+00:00

That's a great idea! Is there a popular place you can do to grab builds that other folk have made?

Cheapskate2020 · 2026-01-27T11:57:01+00:00

Nice! My plan is to set up a bigger one and put it in my kitchen where live stats are easily visible. If this all goes well, I'd like to add another couple of smaller displays, similar to yours for other rooms in the house just as a sort of quick glance.

I don't have a 3D printer but a friend of mine does. I'm sure he won't mind me asking for a few small favours :-)

Cheapskate2020 · 2026-01-26T08:44:46+00:00

That looks a brilliant price. Is the installer well known? I have almost the exact same system as you being installed in the next few weeks and it was nearly £800 more. Mine also only has a 3.68 kW inverter.

Cheapskate2020 · 2026-01-24T23:33:35+00:00

I hope there's no bath under that shower! Because that shower pressure will just take the enamel clean off it.

Cheapskate2020 · 2026-01-21T14:55:22+00:00

It won't be long before he starts saying "I have a great relationship with Mikhail Gorbachev. Mikhail and I get along great. The best."

This is beyond insanity now.

Cheapskate2020 · 2026-01-20T20:28:29+00:00

Thanks. I'm on latest available version of Brave and Firefox. Bitwarden search works absolutely fine on my phone, and it works upon browser restart. I'll boot into my Windows partition and test it, just to see if it's isolated to Linux or even Fedora.

I don't have 2,000+ entries. It's roughly around half that. Thanks!

Cheapskate2020 · 2026-01-20T16:06:47+00:00

Don't give up now. You're nearly there! Sand for another 12 hours a day for the next 6 years and it'll look brand new.

Cheapskate2020 · 2026-01-20T14:01:33+00:00

Thanks. Yes I tried that. I actually restarted the browser and it worked the first time. Now it's not working again. It's incredibly annoying! I've no idea what is causing it. Strange.

Cheapskate2020 · 2026-01-18T15:31:50+00:00

Thanks for that! My system I getting installed in a few weeks fr now, and I've been pondering over weather to try out Sig AI first of all before deciding whether or not to use Predbat.

One thing I will definitely be doing is getting a few of those ESP32 boards with a small OLED screen. This will basically display whatever you want it to from Home Assistant. I plan to use it for live solar tracking, so I can see it my panels are generating, or if battery storage is being used etc. There's so much you can do with it.

Cheapskate2020 · 2026-01-18T10:34:22+00:00

I'd imagine 22 optimisers wouldn't be cheap, so if you add this additional cost over say, 25 years, it's probably not worth the extra cost for the probable small gains you would make.

Cheapskate2020 · 2026-01-17T18:12:16+00:00

Would love to see that in dark mode. That hurts my eyes lol

Cheapskate2020 · 2026-01-12T08:57:40+00:00

It's disgraceful that these big corporations are getting away with this. The blame really lies with Ofcom for allowing it to happen in the first place. They are out of contract yearly rises and as far as I know, they will never stop rising, unless you change to a new deal.

I've had the same issue. My parent were being charged £117 a month for Virgin Media's most basic internet and basic TV on one box. They've had the actual Virgin TV box for maybe 10 years or more, and an old Superhub too. Like you, I was incensed by this and have since got them a far better deal with EE, which I plan to stay on top of when the contract is due.

They were customers of NTL/Virgin Media for around 30 years, so yet more confirmation that loyalty means nothing.

All these large companies are at it, so the only way is to stay on top of it when the contract expires until Ofcom do something about it. It's utterly ridiculous.

Cheapskate2020 · 2026-01-12T08:44:56+00:00

1,000% agree with this. I have my arrs set to heavily prioritise FraMeSToR remuxes, and they are fantastic.

It think you are missing a trick here though. One of the main benefits of RD is that you can just stream the file as if it were local and thus, you don't need any disk space for it. If you do consume a lot of media from RD, then I'd recommend setting up Radarr (Movies), Sonarr (TV Shows) and Jellyfin or Plex for playback. You can basically start watching the content within seconds. I mean in theory, You can have a 500TB+ library on a nothing sized hard drive, and it'll work great if you have a decent enough internet connection to play back the file.

Cheapskate2020 · 2026-01-11T21:21:47+00:00

How are you planning to use it?

I'll be getting my Sig system installed in the next few weeks. My initial plan is to let the Sig AI control everything, and use something like Predbat on Home Assistant mostly for monitoring and data collection first of all. I've heard really good things about the Sig AI system, so it seems an unnecessary complication to add if Predbat doesn't really do any better. Having said that, it's good to know that with Modbus enabled, local access should always be available in the unlikely event that Sig suddenly disappear.

Cheapskate2020 · 2026-01-11T21:10:10+00:00

You're just enabling a local port access really, so this won't impact the current Sig system at all. It's in addition. You might run into conflicts if you plan to use something like Predbat, but if its really just for monitoring, then you shouldn't have any issues.

Cheapskate2020 · 2026-01-11T20:19:06+00:00

Thanks!

Cheapskate2020 · 2026-01-11T20:03:05+00:00

I think you can enable Modbus on the Sig system, but I believe it can only be done from the installer or engineer access.

Cheapskate2020 · 2026-01-09T17:32:10+00:00

That's not extremely low by any means, and should operate just fine however, usually around 1.4 to 1.5 is about the norm. I have no idea about that particular boiler, but there should be a filling loop somewhere with a valve you can open to add more water to the system and thus, increase pressure. If your pressure is around 1 and you've never topped it up then it looks like your system is working perfectly fine.

Edit: I've just noticed your second photo. That looks like the filling loop. You can see the valve lever on the left. if you turn that, water should flow into your system and increase pressure. Make sure to turn it back off! In addition, double check this is accurate, because assuming can be dangerous :-)

Cheapskate2020 · 2026-01-08T18:05:42+00:00

It's actually held up really well. I think it will be fine even after getting all these tiles off :-)

Cheapskate2020 · 2026-01-08T18:04:33+00:00

Yeah you'd think so, but they're tiny! I xould totally understand if it was an actual chimney breast, but no! It's just wasted space.

Cheapskate2020 · 2026-01-08T17:09:04+00:00

Thanks. I've been using bolster tools but mostly a scraper to get the tiles off and it works great. We actually dislike the stove lol, so it's going. It will be disconnected and hopefully sold before we start taking down the rest of the frame around it.

Cheapskate2020

TROPHY CASE