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The ESPHome project is unusually competent, user-centric, and almost uncanny in how well it works.

I'll tell you what I want, though. I'm not sure this is in-scope for ESPHome, or how it's possible to even implement cleanly:

I want to be able to make devices which have tight feedback loops and more complex on-board algorithms

What I really want is e.g. a light sensor controlling lightbulbs. Here, I want the lightbulbs changing almost continuously by almost imperceptible amounts, things like Kalman filters, and similar, to keep a fixed light level and light temperature based on time-of-day.

I'd like to have my air filters, ventilation, heating, humidification, dehumidification, and cooling continuously controlled such that:

1) All run at the right level continuously to keep environmentals and power optimized.

2) Ventilation reduces CO2 / TVOC levels, but increase PM2.5 levels and lets in external temperature

3) Cooling / heating / ventilation impact humidity in complex ways

4) Space heaters cost a lot more than baseline heating, but are sometimes necessary on very cold days

5) This is all less important when I'm not home, and some things change. When I'm home, I want liveable humidity. When I'm not, I want to minimize humidity.

... and so on.

(A second thing I want is ESPHome to allow me to make Zigbee, rather than just wifi, devices)




I use Home Assistant for doing most of what you're asking for. This integration works great for adjusting light level and temperature: https://github.com/basnijholt/adaptive-lighting.

My home has an ERV and I use a couple Shelly relays (one for power and the other to boost airflow) integrated into HA to modulate the amount of fresh air I bring in, currently based on indoor/outdoor temperature and humidity. I don't have an air quality sensor, but if I had one I could easily integrate that into my automations.


Woah. That looks awesome.

A red flag, relative to what I would do is: "Frequency to adapt the lights, in seconds." I would like to be able to make tight feedback loops, which means much less than seconds. I use HA + ESPHome as well, and that's on my list of issues I'd like to see resolved. To understand why this matters for a lot of controllers:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gain%E2%80%93bandwidth_product

Audio amplifiers are often in the 50MHz range, in order to achieve good performance in the <20kHz range. Add to that, in this case, the desire for steady transitions so I don't have sudden light or noise changes (stepping through 255 states takes .

That said, holistically, this does what I want better than how I was going to do it.

The other major issue I have with HA is reliability. About 10% of the time, some automations don't work. I'd really like to be able to set state (blinds are down after 8pm) rather than actions (blinds go down at 8pm). If you have suggestions....


I would love to hear more about the integration you've setup. I, too, have an ERV but it's on a dumb controller right now.

I don't use HA yet, but it's a project I plan to tackle soon. I've also been doing some research on ESP and energy monitoring, so it sounds like what you've done is right up the same alley.


I have done all this using ESPHome. There a quite some control loop components you can utilize for this, such as bang-bang and pid thermostat.

My thermostat: https://github.com/wildekek/esphome-opentherm-templates

My air cleaner: https://github.com/wildekek/BlitzHome-BH-AP2501

My bathroom hygrostat uses Home Assistant: https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/generic_hygrostat...




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