SensESP

Introduction

TL;DR: Click here for the Getting Started documentation!

SensESP is a Signal K sensor development toolkit for the ESP32 platform. If you are a boater (or a professional developer!) who wants to build a custom Wi-Fi connected sensor for your boat, this is the toolkit you need. SensESP runs on commonly available ESP32 boards and helps you get sensor readings from physical sensors and transform them to meaningful data for Signal K or other outputs.

SensESP is built on the Arduino software development framework, a popular open source platform for embedded development. (Note that this refers only to the software stack - Arduino hardware is not supported.) To automate the management of external libraries, it also heavily relies on PlatformIO, a cross-platform build system for embedded devices (in other words, Arduino IDE is not supported).

SensESP features include:

• High-level programming interfaces for sensor development
• Support for a wide range of common sensor hardware with a set of add-on libraries - and if native support is missing, using existing Arduino libraries directly is also quite simple in most cases
• A Web configuration user interface for sensors, transforms, and output paths
• Easy on-boarding with a Wi-Fi configuration tool and fully automated server discovery
• Full Signal K integration with authentication, and transmission and reception of data
• Support for over-the-air (OTA) firmware updates
• Support for remote debugging over Wi-Fi

To use SensESP, you need an ESP32 development board and a way to power it from the boat's 12V or 24V nominal power system. This can be done with commonly available ESP32DevKit boards and external DC-DC converters, or alternatively, the Sailor Hat with ESP32 (SH-ESP32) has all these features baked into a developer-friendly board and enclosure kit.

Example use cases of SensESP include:

• Engine temperature measurement
• Switch input for bilge alarms
• Device control using relays
• Custom GPS and attitude sensors
• Engine RPM measurement
• Anchor chain counter
• Battery voltage and current measurement
• Tank level measurement
• Custom NMEA 2000 sensors

At heart, SensESP is a development toolkit, and not ready-made software. This means that you will need to do some simple programming to use it. Don't worry, though. The project is newbie-friendly, so you don't need to know much to get started. A lot of examples and tutorials are provided, and some related projects also provide ready-to-use firmware for specific use cases.

Documentation

To get started, see the project documentation.

For reference, the old SensESP version 1 documentation is still available at the repository wiki.

Getting help

Discussion about SensESP happens mostly on the Signal K Discord on the #sensesp channel. To register as a new user, follow the invite link at signalk.org.

Another place for SensESP discussions is the discussion board on the SensESP GitHub repository.

Getting Started with Version 3

Major Changes

• WiFiManager replaced with built-in implementation

  • Supports simultaneous client and AP
  • Same frontend used as captive portal
  • Support for multiple alternative WiFi networks

• Web server replaced with ESP-IDF standard implementation

• Websockets replaced with ESP-IDF standard implementation

• AsyncTCP dependencies removed

• RemoteDebug replaced with ESP-IDF debugging macros

• Web Frontend rewritten from scratch with Preact and Bootstrap

  • JSONEditor no longer used
  • More flexible and user-friendly UI
  • Support for authentication
  • Support for frontend plugins (app-defined React pages)
  • Indicate when a ocnfiguration change requires a restart

• Remove Startable class

• Rename classes:

  • SensorT -> Sensor
  • IntegratorT -> Integrator
  • DebounceTemplate -> Debounce
  • WSClient -> SKWSClient

• Add a run script to help with SensESP development

• Function signature changes:

  • Pass received JSON objects
  • Rename ValueConsumer::set_input to ValueConsumer::set. The value parameter is now passed as a const reference. The input_channel parameter is removed.

• Add new transforms:

  • ExpiringValue: output value expires after a given time unless updated
  • Repeat: repeats the input value at a given interval
  • RepeatStopping: repeats the input value at a given interval, stopping after a given time
  • RepeatExpiring: repeats the input value at a given interval, expiring after a given time. RepeatExpiring outputs an Nullable<T> value, where the value is invalid/null after expiration.
  • RepeatConstantRate: repeats the input value at a constant rate, regardless of input rate. RepeatConstantRate outputs an Nullable<T> value, where the value is invalid/null after expiration.
  • Join: joins multiple input values into a single output tuple that is emitted when any inputs are updated
  • Zip: joins multiple input values into a single output tuple that is emitted when all inputs are updated
  • Throttle: limits the rate of output updates
  • Filter: emits the input value only if it passes a given test

• Implement stream producers that emit characters or lines from a stream (e.g., a serial port)

• SKEmitter::as_signalk() has been renamed to SKEmitter::as_signalk_json(). It now writes its output to a JsonDocument reference instead of returning a String.

• Custom Signal K output is done differently than before. Instead of implementing an as_signalk() method in your SKOutput specialization that returned a serialized string, you should implement an as_signalk_json() method that writes constructs an ArduinoJson object in the provided JsonObject reference.

• UIOutput has been renamed to StatusPageItem. UILambdaOutput has been removed. Since StatusPageItem is now a ValueConsumer, you can connect a producer to it.

• SemaphoreValue is a new class that can be used to synchronize access to a shared value between multiple threads/tasks.

• Configurable base class has been split to Saveable, Serializable and ConfigItem. Web configuration cards are now only rendered for objects that have been wrapped in a ConfigItem call.

• Smart pointers are used internally throughout the project. This reduces the risk of memory leaks or crashes due to dangling pointers. It is also possible, but not mandatory, to use smart pointers in your own code.

• Internal instrumentation has been improved. Web user interface status page now shows memory usage and event loop statistics.

Migrating Existing Projects

• Update your project's platformio.ini file to use the new version of SensESP:

  lib_deps =
  SignalK/SensESP @ >=3.0.0-beta.2,<4
  # https://github.com/SignalK/SensESP.git  # Use this line to use the latest git version
  # symlink:///Users/mairas/src/SignalK/SensESP  # Use this line to use a local copy

• Adjust the build flags in your project's platformio.ini file as follows:

  build_flags =
  -D LED_BUILTIN=2
  ; Max (and default) debugging level in Arduino ESP32 Core
  -D CORE_DEBUG_LEVEL=ARDUHAL_LOG_LEVEL_VERBOSE
  ; Arduino Core bug workaround: define the log tag for the Arduino
  ; logging macros.
  -D TAG='"Arduino"'
  ; Use the ESP-IDF logging library - required by SensESP.
  -D USE_ESP_IDF_LOG

• If you have the following in the beginning of your setup() function:

  #ifndef SERIAL_DEBUG_DISABLED
  SetupSerialDebug(115200);
  #endif

  replace it with:

  SetupLogging();

• Remove the final sensesp_app->start(); call from your setup() function.

• The reactesp namespace is no longer imported. If you have any references to classes in this namespace, you will need to update them to use the namespace explicitly.

  Additionally, ReactESP classes have been renamed:

  • ReactESP -> reactesp::EventLoop
  • *Reaction -> reactesp::*Event

  For example, ReactESP class should be referred to as reactesp::EventLoop. In particular, this change probably needs to be made in your project's main.cpp file.

• ReactESP is no longer a singleton. Earlier, you could refer to the singleton instance of ReactESP using ReactESP::app. Now, the object pointer is maintained by the SensESPBaseApp class, and you can refer to it using event_loop(). For example:

  event_loop()->onRepeat(
  1000,
  []() { Serial.println("Hello, world!"); }
  );

• Objects inheriting from Configurable and having a config_path defined were automatically added to the web configuration UI. This is no longer the case. Now, you need to explicitly call ConfigItem with the object as an argument. For example:

  auto input_calibration = new Linear(1.0, 0.0, "/input/calibration");
  
  ConfigItem(input_calibration)
    ->set_title("Input Calibration")
    ->set_description("Analog input value adjustment.")
    ->set_sort_order(1100);
  
  analog_input->connect_to(input_calibration);

Development

The frontend project is in the frontend directory tree. To build the frontend, you need to have Node and pnpm installed. Install the required dependencies:

./run install-frontend

Then build the frontend:

./run build-frontend

This will both build the project and save the deployment files in C++ source files suitable for embedding in the SensESP firmware.

To start the development server, run:

cd frontend
pnpm run dev