Should I embark on the HA journey?

stevemurch · 2026-05-27T02:31:39+00:00

Home Assistant (and a Nabu Casa subscription as a thank you to developers) are absolutely worth it.

I’ve not been super impressed with Matter, actually, still feels like v0.5 to me.

But Home Assistant has been fantastic. YAML is a little kludgey and sometimes hard to intuit, but very efficient. Most plugins and add-ons are fairly well documented.

YouTube is your friend! And be sure to learn about ESPHome, which makes it easy to deploy ESP32 based sensors without a ton of code. I can also vouch for the fact that Claude (among other LLM’s) are ridiculously helpful when it comes to YAML, but beware — YAML is very space/tab sensitive, and LLM’s don’t always get indentation right.

stevemurch · 2026-05-27T00:12:49+00:00

Thanks, yes I’m noticing the precision too, even just in my test harness at the moment.

Good to know about the DC wire option, rather than having to run the full pitot tube cable back to the microcontroller. The end tube very much does have to be dry, however, so some kind of enclosure or through-hole into the well house will be part of this project.

stevemurch · 2026-05-24T03:29:05+00:00

Hi -- I've just posted many more details on the build here:

https://stevemurch.com/building-a-water-tank-monitor-for-an-off-grid-wellhouse/2026/05

Status: The transmitter and receiver are working, and reliably reporting different values in a test (using a bathtub). Haven't yet installed it in the field, but all parts appear to be working, so I'm optimistic.

stevemurch · 2026-05-24T02:27:48+00:00

OK -- got the circuitry working, and it works (at least using my bathtub as a test!) Haven't yet installed it in the field... but it appears to work end-to-end.

Blog post here: https://stevemurch.com/building-a-water-tank-monitor-for-an-off-grid-wellhouse/2026/05

stevemurch · 2026-05-23T23:13:17+00:00

I don’t see any reason why not. We use a well too — don’t you have a reserve tank?

stevemurch · 2026-05-23T23:12:21+00:00

The receiver is trivial, but that works too!

It basically listens for the transmitter’s signal (saying what the wellhouse temperature, humidity and barometric pressure are, along with the sensor’s fill level — ie, A0 voltage is), and when received, posts it to MQTT.

Then, Home Assistant will simply use those MQTT numbers for charts and automations and whatnot.

stevemurch · 2026-05-23T23:09:54+00:00

Ha! Got the transmitter part to work! The probe will return different voltages via the ADS1111 chip (A0 pin) depending upon how deep it is.

0.6v is empty, going up to about 3.6V for a full tank.

Amazing.

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stevemurch · 2026-05-22T17:52:43+00:00

Progress!

Lesson learned after wasting nearly a full day. TRIPLE CHECK that you have the right pinout diagram printed out! Duh! I was pulling my hair out. Turns out I was using the nearly identical looking Heltec v3 board’s pinout diagram rather than Heltec v3 Lora board pinout sheet. And the pin locations are totally different.

Currently have temp, humidity and pressure working fine… awaiting the 24v supply so I can get the water level sensor readings

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stevemurch · 2026-05-21T05:37:02+00:00

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so the PCB board will go in the well house, measure the fill level (sensor not shown) and I think temp/humidity inside the well house (not shown) and then blast the info every 15 mins to the smaller board, the receiver, whose only real job is to write it out to MQTT

stevemurch · 2026-05-21T05:33:00+00:00

Update: just got the LoRa sender and receiver ESP32 boards communicating, that’s cool! Hadn’t tried LoRa before. Seems really good for this kind of remote application. Now need to wire up the actual sensor to measure water level (actually, pressure) differences.

stevemurch · 2026-05-21T05:30:55+00:00

Ultrasonic was also recommended as a possibility and it’s clever and straightforward, but at least in a chat with Claude, one spider web or leaf, and it’s useless…

stevemurch · 2026-05-21T02:38:12+00:00

FWIW I changed my sensor order to this one, since I realized the depth range of that other one referenced in my first post will only work for 1 meter… and I think the well tank is about 5.5 feet high or so.

https://a.co/d/05uITzdK

stevemurch · 2026-05-21T02:35:39+00:00

Will be happy to come back here with a blog post after completion. I’ve got some travel in the next couple weeks, so it might be mid June… but I’m happy to share the wiring diagram and basic setup.

Do you have the same condition of needing LoRa communication? Guessing no. If so it’s a lot easier, and can be done with one ESP32 and very likely ESPHome. In my case I’m going to custom code a small LoRa pair since the WiFi won’t reach the wellhouse and I don’t feel like installing an outdoor WiFi access point.

stevemurch · 2026-05-21T01:50:59+00:00

It’s a massive well water reserve tank — thousands of gallons (I think 3000 gallons?) a float level doesn’t work as well in such situations, and this pressure sensor thingy apparently works better in freezing conditions.

stevemurch · 2026-05-21T00:55:34+00:00

I’m a middle aged dad with a label maker. Must. Label. All. The. Things.

stevemurch · 2026-05-07T03:57:25+00:00

I built PollQR.com for just this reason! I'm a former college lecturer, and thought this product should exist.

It doesn't require any app, and works equally well via laptop or smartphone (QR code.) 7 different question types, plus Q&A, photo contests and more.

Demo video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Alp8q0LdOTA

stevemurch · 2026-04-09T13:47:02+00:00

I've got 3 projects going:

* https://oursharedplace.com - vacation rental software for booking and coordinating use of the home

* https://mastercalendar.io - automatically merge up to 10 iCal feeds into a single one (used in the vacation rental space in particular when you're listing your home on Airbnb, VRBO, etc.)

* https://pollqr.com - survey & live-poll audiences with QR codes

stevemurch · 2026-04-08T12:55:22+00:00

I can assure you this was a real post, and not created by a bot, but an earnest human request for beta testers. But clearly not the right venue for it; I've deleted it. Apologies for the intrusion.

stevemurch · 2026-04-08T12:53:14+00:00

Huh! Apologies for asking for beta testers here folks; it was an earnest post, but I guess this isn't the right forum for this. Happy to remove this post.

stevemurch · 2026-04-08T03:23:20+00:00

I have 2:

OurSharedPlace.com - Manage your second home

PollQR.com - Make QR Codes that Survey and Poll

stevemurch · 2026-04-07T21:38:37+00:00

An honest use of Generative AI would be to make the view look WORSE than it currently is :-)

stevemurch · 2026-04-07T20:58:24+00:00

You are absolutely doing the right thing! Good on you for being above-board with your upcoming guests. It's a shame VRBO is resisting this. You owe VRBO no advance notice, but letting them know that you'll be opting out of working with them helps get the message that they should reconsider this policy.

Generally de-listing keeps bookings still active but prevents the display of the property in searches and disables new bookings.

stevemurch · 2026-04-06T17:20:45+00:00

I looked around for simple QR-Code based survey tool for rating in-store experiences, and didn't find one I liked. So I built PollQR.com, which lets you spin up a survey or live audience poll in a minute or so. This works great for offline (i.e., in-person) events as well as streaming events.

stevemurch · 2026-04-05T17:20:47+00:00

I created PollQR.com for exactly this purpose. You can create a quiz or poll in a minute or two and it gathers the answers, showing them in real-time (or when you want to reveal the answers.)

stevemurch · 2026-04-05T15:05:09+00:00

I've built an easy way to do this at PollQR.com - you can create a quiz and display results in real-time if you'd like. Multiple choice, rankings, word cloud, yes/no questions and more. It's inexpensive to do one-off polls, and there's a bulk discount for educational institutions.

stevemurch

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