ESP32-C3 water monitor for a turtle tank: temperature, TDS and clarity, straight into Home Assistant with ESPHome
I keep a red-eared slider named Bobuerto. The one number that actually matters in his tank is water temperature, and the two things I kept guessing at were "is it time for a water change" and "why is the water suddenly cloudy". So I built a small water monitor around a Seeed XIAO ESP32-C3 with three cheap probes. No soldering, one jumper-wire kit, and the whole thing runs off a phone charger.…
A turtle owner named Bobuerto created a water monitoring system for his red-eared slider named Bobuerto using a Seeed XIAO ESP32-C3 board and three cheap probes. The system measures water temperature, TDS (total dissolved solids), and turbidity, which indicate if it's time for a water change and if there's a cloudiness in the water.
The XIAO ESP32-C3 board runs off a phone charger and communicates with Home Assistant through ESPHome without any soldering required. The wiring involves connecting the DS18B20 temperature probe, TDS meter, and turbidity sensor to specific pins on the XIAO board, with special attention to ensuring the sensors are not powered by the 5V pin.
The firmware reads the sensors every 30 seconds and sends averaged data to Home Assistant every five minutes.
Written by urgent.news from Dev.to's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
