I finally finished my first zigbee sensor device using the xiao esp32c6. It has two sensors, a contact sensor that will hook to a float in a tank, and a temperature sensor to measure the air temp.
It was a struggle because I wanted to hook the device into my Home Assistant system and use the inputs for freeze protection and sensing the level in my septic tank. Getting the device to join and for z2m to recognize the inputs took some serious prowling of the web. Seems most of the examples on this subject are way outdated or just plain wrong. Contributing to this problem was that z2m changed the interface for their converters earlier this year, and a lot of the comments out there are outdated, mixed with the new method, or just plain wrong. To top it off, at the time of this writing, the z2m documentation on converters … sucks. I know they’ll fix it, and I just got caught by circumstances, but what a pain.
Any how, I just proved to myself that I can make my own sensors for those special cases where a sensor that does what I want doesn’t exist to just buy off the shelf.
And, let me praise that little expansion board Seeed makes for the xiao series. I’m using the display on it to show updates, I used the grove connectors to hook in the float and 18b20 temperature sensor. I’m powering it off a usb wall wart so I don’t have to worry about batteries. It’s sitting on my patio right now under extended testing before I mount it in a weatherproof enclosure I have other devices in.
Good job Seeed, these little things are really nice.