New hardware model! Hestia Zero - your feedback please

[HestiaPi]

Have been working on this idea the last days and we noticed that in order to minimise components/complexity/costs/casing requirements we can use ESP32 that has touch sensor functionality integrated. As we are considering making the case out of FR4 material (what PCBs are made of) in some nice colour, we can integrate some touch pads on the outside or the inside of the front cover at almost no extra cost… Off to some prototypes…

[smgaetano]

This may be interesting for you:

SBS’ Cricket ESP32 Packs Espressif’s Popular SoC Into a Raspberry Pi Zero Form Factor

To test the idea simply.

[HestiaPi]

Thank you but I’m not sure I see your point. Having both a Pi Zero and an ESP32 wouldn’t help during prototyping/development unless I am missing something.

[smgaetano]

This board have the same form factor of the PI, so may be possible to use it instead of PI on the same Hestia board.
My experience with Hestia is that PI warm too much and the temperature sensor do not read lower temperature than 20° about ( I have try to position the sensore in a lot position, and more). My solution was to use iothermostater sw adding an external esp32 board with temperature sensore, the same of Hestia, connected to Hestia using MQTT protocol to get the house temperature. So may be a good idea to substitute the PI with a esp32 board who warm less and put the sensor in the same box.
Ciao
Sergio

[HestiaPi]

I have read 16’C (about 60’F) with no problem. Are you using the ribbon cable provided and placed the sensor inside that triangular with the sensor facing out? Has anyone else had issues with low temps?
Apart from that ESP32 can be much smaller which is something we are after as making the whole case smaller is a plus. The PCB will be a new design as many of the components can be different (PSU, relays, LCD)

[kpgeo]

I observe consistently 2C higher when inside the bottom triangle with the sensor facing out compared to hanging beside the wall on the cable. This is compared to my commercial programmable thermostat on the same wall. They match when out, 2C higher when in. There was some discussion of this elsewhere on the forum too. This isn’t just when the pi is working hard, but all the time (for example at 2% cpu load and 36C CPU temp.) I’ve added a Samsung S4 as an “external sensor” in the same location, also 2C lower.