Comment by fullstop

Here's a few things that I made with the esp8266:

    * Connected an accelerometer and hall effect sensor, used to know when the washing machine is in use and the state of the lid.  I taped a magnet to the lid so that it can be sensed with the hall sensor, so no wires are moving / need to be managed.  Sends a message if we've left clothes in the wash.
    * Fish tank lights with WS2812B strips
    * Water softener brine level sensor using an IR transmitter / receiver in the lid of the brine tank, lets me know when to add salt.
    * Plant moisture sensor, lets me know when to water.
    * 1x4 WS2812B lights that we can all use to mark ourselves as on a call, either through a web page or Telegram, so that we know to be quiet because someone is on some sort of video call.

If you're using esp32 or esp8266 take a look at esphome.io for ideas -- you can do a ton of stuff without writing much code at all. Most of my projects are done with the Nodemcu framework because I have a soft spot for Lua, but I do use esphome.io to interact with some Mijia BLE temperature and humidity sensors.