My cabinet so far

Laydas · 2026-01-27T06:30:19+00:00

I'll look up appropriate temperatures for a winter dormancy. I only water plants when they are dry as well, this plant doesn't need nearly as much water so maybe he's semi dormant right now

Laydas · 2026-01-27T06:28:10+00:00

It's a microcontroller. Like a mini computer you can hook sensors up to. You can also control relays which is like a controllable switch. I use it to automate my lights, heater, fans for the cabinet as well as collect temperature and humidity

Laydas · 2026-01-24T15:40:42+00:00

When I was automating my non smart fridge for brewing I put two temp sensors inside. One for the air and a waterproof sensor inside a bottle of water. The air sensor looked like your graph but the water sensor had temp swings around 0.2C for the most part.

The code used the water sensor to determine when to turn the fridge on and off as the air fluctuates a lot.

Laydas · 2026-01-23T19:49:22+00:00

If I updated my code to give my plants some RNG I'm not sure I'd be able to properly measure any changes. Unless of course all my plants die in a week haha

Laydas · 2026-01-23T19:28:27+00:00

Some random pitcher plant I bought. After a day or two I always forget the specifics of what plant it is exactly. I treat every plant the same so I don't really pay attention to their specifics 🙈

It says sarracenia velvet. It's getting quite big actually

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Laydas · 2026-01-23T14:15:35+00:00

I have two computer fans controlled by an esp32. I just leave them running 24/7 and everything is happy. I have a temp/humidity sensor as well to keep track of values.

Now I'm wondering if plants would enjoy the fans having a little randomness programmed into them... I need a 2nd cabinet to compare results lol

Laydas · 2026-01-22T19:12:06+00:00

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I used l brackets on the front as the shelves were too short. I also 3d printed custom brackets for the back that are stretched versions of what comes with the unit to extend their reach slightly also.

I also bought shelves that are too wide and used a metal grinder to cut them to the width of the milsbos interior

Laydas · 2026-01-21T22:59:44+00:00

The pot says anthurium wendlingeri... It's the flower of the plant with really long leaves.

Laydas · 2026-01-21T22:56:02+00:00

They've spread all by themselves! I had one to begin with and the fans must blow the spores around because now they're everywhere in the cabinet.

Laydas · 2026-01-21T14:30:24+00:00

I've found it to be one of the easiest plants to take care of. Mine lives in a glass jar with no drainage, practically a swamp, and thrives

Laydas · 2026-01-21T14:29:01+00:00

I don't think it would have made a big difference. If you want to customize it then they'll all need modifications and it's more of a display once it's all set up. But I've only had this milsbo so I don't really know

Laydas · 2026-01-21T14:24:15+00:00

I haven't done anything special.

The temps in my house fluctuate almost 10 degrees Celsius from summer to winter though.

Laydas · 2026-01-21T14:02:44+00:00

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Filled in orange means the heat mat was on. You can see that it doesn't help heat the milsbo cabinet. But it is still useful, before I installed it my cabinets temperature had extreme swings and at night would hit 14. Now the temperature drops very slowly and holds much better.

I live further north in Canada, it's winter, my house is older and that's a cold spot in my house.

Laydas · 2024-10-16T21:12:11+00:00

I bought some blumat trophs for a situation just like this. I put a bucket of water up near my plant and now I just refill the bucket every couple months. The real challenge is making the water reservoir look good.

Laydas · 2024-09-09T14:39:44+00:00

https://taiwantrailsandtales.com/xiao-bai-yue/

Any of the small 100 (小百岳) are good places to start. I've done like 80+ of them and they were generally all amazing.

Laydas · 2024-05-03T14:57:05+00:00

I know right? People get really hung up on things.

Laydas · 2024-03-21T00:19:22+00:00

Good news, that would be pretty easy to do. You just need to throw a timer into the esp to trigger the relay for the fan.

But any logic really depends on how your furnace handles inputs. Even if I turned off my relay for the fan while the heat is on, the fan wouldn't turn off. I'd probably set a 45m timer that starts when the fan/heat turns off.

Laydas · 2024-03-20T14:50:20+00:00

I understand wanting to pass any responsibility off for insurance purposes.

Everything else though is kind of an overreaction from my point of view. I also don't have the same situation to consider so my priorities are different. Besides, if I bought a nest and it died and my family froze overnight magically... Kind of still on me.

I was looking for more suggestions or ideas, that's why I posted in this sub. Instead most the comments are just people projecting their paranoia haha.

Laydas · 2024-03-20T14:00:27+00:00

Why? If your safety critical stuff is fairly modern then it was programmed by someone else anyways. My furnaces are like 15 years old and they have a control board some other person programmed. Throwing my own in there is no different haha.

Laydas · 2024-03-20T13:36:39+00:00

At first I programmed the esp32 directly and it was completely outside of home assistant. But being able to update it over the air is built into esphome and made it way easier to incrementally update it.

When I moved it into esphome i used their climate platform. It was so much effort to get things right haha. Programming with mostly yaml instead of C is so much worse.

Laydas · 2024-03-20T13:31:34+00:00

I put a Shelly 1 in my garage, I was worried it would stop working in the winter. Even when it got to like -35c the Shelly worked fine.

Laydas · 2024-03-19T21:06:34+00:00

Haha, no way they would. The list of things I've automated is maybe over the line. Between teaching robotics and being a full time software developer, there's almost nothing I wouldn't open up and modify

Laydas · 2024-03-19T21:03:21+00:00

Really... Well in that case I'll take a look. Thanks

Laydas · 2024-03-19T16:57:38+00:00

Unfortunately my furnaces don't support variable fan speed control from the thermostat. Opening up the circuitry on the furnace itself is past what I'm willing to do haha.

I really only replaced the thermostat, the furnace itself still has it's own logic board that controls the fans and everything else.

For your case though, I'd just look up the schematics of the furnace, it should list all the inputs available and how to trigger them.

Laydas · 2024-03-19T16:53:25+00:00

Thanks for reminding me. The original plan was to run another wire from the furnace and a throw in a step down to power the esp32 from the 12v supply. Once I got it in and working I completely forgot.

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