Eric Nam's Latest Project Clones the IKEA VINDSTYRKA Air Quality Monitor Onto an Espressif ESP32

Electronics YouTuber Eric Nam, also known as "That Project," has built an air quality monitor that might look familiar to IKEA shoppers — using, as it does, an Espressif ESP32 microcontroller and an LCD display to mimic the look of the company's VINDSTYRKA.

"I made a similar version of IKEA's air quality sensor, VINDSTYRKA, using [an Espressif] ESP32 and an environmental sensor," Nam explains. "What I wanted to do was create this UI [User Interface] design using LVGL. Not only that, I wanted to create a device that runs very similarly by connecting an environmental sensor."

IKEA's VINDSTYRKA launched as an upgrade to its earlier VINDRIKTNING air quality sensor, replacing the LED bar graph on the front with an segment-based LCD panel capable of displaying real-time PM2.5 particulate matter, total volatile organic compound (tVOC), temperature, and humidity readings.

In Nam's recreation, the custom LCD panel is swapped out for a color bitmap LCD — the WT32-SC01 Plus, specifically, which includes in its compact volume an Espressif ESP32-S3 microcontroller with Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) and Wi-Fi connectivity. It also includes support for LVGL and the LoyvanGFX graphics library, which is what Nam has used to painstakingly recreate IKEA's VINDSTYRKA UI — right down to mimicking the seven-segment numerical characters.

This cloned user interface isn't just for show, either: Nam's recreation includes an environmental sensor, connected to the ESP32 over the I2C bus, which reads in PM2.5 particulate matter, total volatile organic compound (tVOC), temperature, and humidity — just like IKEA's original.

More information is available in Nam's video above, with source code published to GitHub. The maker has promised a follow-up video, to be published on his YouTube channel, with more details about the sensor side of the project.