Interfacing to an IKEA VINDRIKTNING air sensor

[davidg238]

This is a description of how to snoop the serial communications between the air sensor and host controller of an IKEA VINDRIKTNING, using an ESP32 to access the air quality sensor readings.

[davidg238]

Updated 2023-03-15, to run standalone without USB serial monitor. Data is sent via MQTT to io.adafruit.com, with some local LED status indication (there is a video in the update).

[floitsch]

Interesting.
You state that you are leaving the battery connected because of power surges. Isn't the vindriktning connected to USB, with the 5V directly coming from the USB cable?

[davidg238]

I have had trouble before with WiFi when the ESP32 was powered by USB only, but that could be a poor wall-wart or USB micro cable. Using a different, high quality wall-wart + USB-C cable for the VINDRIKTNING and upon checking, the standalone setup works fine without the LiPo. I fixed the README. I was lazy, thanks for the nudge.