I‘m always trying to hide sensors an other tech in the house as good as possible but this is of course not always easy to do.
For quite some time I thought about hiding temperature and humidity sensors in lighting canopies and was wondering if this is something anyone has done before?! I do have some lights with rather big canopies (IKEA) that would be suitable to hide some equipment in there. I thought about a setup with a LiPo battery that delivers power to the sensor (some esp with deep sleep waking up every few minutes) and a loading circuit that loads the battery whenever the light is turned on. Under normal circumstances the light would be switched on for at least an hour or so a day so that it should be enough to load the batteries (I guess).
Did anyone of you try to do this or has any experience? Is this a good spot for these kind of sensors or will I get some problems with the measurements in the enclosed canopy? Thanks for sharing your experience!
I would expect your readings to be inaccurate, for the same reason that closed rooms trap heat: without airflow, heat can only dissipate through the surrounding materials. So, the space inside of the light enclosure will be slow to heat and slow to cool, relative to the room it’s in. It’s also going to be on the ceiling (heat rises) and in a small space with other sources of heat (the lights and LiPo battery).
Humidity would also be affected by the enclosed space and lack of airflow.
I think the best you can do is to make your sensors inconspicuous, while keeping them fully exposed to the environment. I also keep my sensors away from windows so that they aren’t affected by direct sunlight or wind.
Then you for sharing your thoughts on this. That was exactly what I was also fearing… maybe someone else tried it anyway and has some first hand experiences?
I do have thermostats in every room already. Unfortunately they don’t offer a usable interface (no radio connection) so I would need to replace them in order to use these. This would cost me a lot more than building my own sensors.
