Smart Home Automation & Monitoring Hub

Modern smart home systems typically rely on cloud connectivity and internet access, which introduces latency, privacy concerns, and dependency on external infrastructure. In many real-world scenarios, reliable internet connectivity is not always available, and users still require fast, secure, and private home automation.

The Smart Home Automation and Monitoring Hub is a centralized smart home controller developed to manage and monitor multiple IoT devices from a single interface. This project presents a fully local, router-free smart home hub built using ESP32 devices. The entire system operates without internet connectivity, ensuring low latency, high reliability, and complete data privacy. The system is built using an ESP32-S3-BOX-3 platform and integrates voice wake-up, environmental sensing, and wireless communication using ESP-NOW and Wi-Fi/HTTPS. The device acts as the “brain” of the home, communicating with remote ESP nodes to collect indoor weather, appliance control & video surveillance while providing a touch-enabled graphical interface for real-time control and feedback.

The system supports voice-controlled appliance automation using the ESP

Speech Recognition (ESP-SR) stack. Users can control home appliancessuch as lights, air conditioners, TVs, and other IR-based devices using natural voice commands. Legacy appliances are supported through an onboard IR transmitter and learning mode, allowing the system to replace traditional remote controls.

This project was created to solve the problem of fragmented smart home devices that operate independently and require multiple apps or hubs. By combining automation, monitoring, and communication into one device, the hub provides a low-power, responsive, and scalable solution for smart homes.

1. Smart Home Hub (ESP32-S3 BOX)

The ESP32-S3 Box acts as a central controller with a touchscreen dashboard.

It integrates multiple wireless nodes and provides a unified interface for monitoring, automation and multimedia.

Touchscreen dashboard using LVGL

Speech recognition support

IR transmitter & receiver for legacy appliances

Wi-Fi + ESP-NOW hybrid communication

2. Indoor Weather Monitoring

A dedicated sensor node continuously measures indoor environmental conditions and sends real-time telemetry to the hub using ESP-NOW.

Temperature & Humidity

PM2.5 & PM10 particles

Air Quality Index (AQI)

Real-time updates on dashboard

Visual air-quality indicators

Low-power wireless communication

3. Wireless Appliance Control

A relay node receives ESP-NOW commands from the hub to control electrical appliances.

Instant response (low latency ESP-NOW)

Works without internet/router

Reliable peer-to-peer communication

4. Voice + IR Control for Legacy Devices

The hub includes built-in microphone and IR transmitter to control devices that use traditional remote controls.

Voice-activated control

IR learning mode for custom remotes

Enables automation of non-smart appliances

5. Live Surveillance System

An ESP32-CAM node streams live video over HTTP, which is displayed directly on the dashboard.

Real-time monitoring

Local network streaming

6. Energy Monitoring Dashboard

The system includes an energy usage interface showing live power consumption and estimated electricity costs.

Real-time power usage (Watts)

Monthly energy consumption (kWh)

Estimated monthly electricity bill

Daily energy cost tracking

7. Hybrid Communication Architecture

The system combines two wireless technologies for efficiency:

ESP-NOW - Low-latency device-to-device control & telemetry

Wi-Fi HTTP - High-bandwidth video streaming

This hybrid approach ensures low power consumption, high reliability, and scalability.

8. Radar Based Device Wake-Up

A radar presence sensor integrated inside the ESP32-S3 Box detects when a user approaches the device.

The display automatically wakes and activates the dashboard, enabling a touchless user experience.

ESP32S3-BOX-3, Buy from Digikey

ESP32-S3 Custom Sensor Hub

Note: For this project, a custom-designed environmental sensor node was developed using an ESP32-S3 + STM32 architecture.

This node integrates multiple air-quality and environmental sensors, including:

PM7003 – Particulate Matter Sensor (PM1.0 / PM2.5 / PM10)

LTR390 – UV & Ambient Light Sensor

BME688 – Temperature, Humidity, Pressure & Gas Sensor

The STM32 is used for sensor interfacing and data acquisition, while the ESP32-S3 handles wireless communication using ESP-NOW.

However, the system is designed to be hardware-flexible. Any ESP32-based board with compatible environmental sensors can be used to replicate the sensor node functionality.

For the surveillance module, this project uses a CamThink ESP32-S3 Camera module for live video streaming.

As an alternative, users may use the widely available standard ESP32-CAM module, which is fully compatible with the system architecture.

During this project, the following integrations and features were implemented:

Development of 5 touchscreen UI screens using LVGL

Integration of ESP-NOW wireless communication

Local HTTP video streaming & JPEG decoding

Integration of Radar-based wake-up detection

Modification of ESP-SR voice recognition & IR learning and transmission file.

Project Setup & Development

The project uses a hybrid developmentworkflow combining ESP-IDF and Arduino IDE, depending on the node functionality.

Developed using ESP-IDF inside Visual Studio Code.

ESP-IDF Extension for VS Code (V5.1.6)

Python (latest version) – required by ESP-IDF toolchain

Follow these official steps to download and setup esp-idf.

The factory demo was used as the base firmware and extended to implement custom features and multi-node integration. You can download or clone this repository to get started with demo codes.

This project primarily focuses on system integration and software architecture using ready-to-use development boards and custom PCBs. Since the modules are pre-designed and assembled, a detailed circuit schematic is not included.

Instead, the hardware architecture is presented as a module-level block diagram, showing how the different devices communicate and interact.

UI Pages Implementation (LVGL)

The ESP32-S3 Box uses the LVGL graphics library to implement a multi-screen touchscreen dashboard.

Each feature (Weather, Devices, Camera, Energy, etc.) is implemented as an individual LVGL page.

To avoid repeating code, a base page template is created and reused by all screens.

This function creates a full-screen container that acts as the root object for every screen.

Instead of writing page setup repeatedly, every screen calls this function first.