The sunset timer works well. It turned the lights on last night and turned them off again at 3:30 this morning. Next I turned my attention to the flakey temperature reporting from the porch and greenhouse. I decided to wire up an ESP chip to do the job but first I tested the WiFi in the back room by planting an ESP chip in the corner transmitting MQTT packets. I was able to receive them all. I struggled with getting a one wire device working on the ESP. Finally i hooked up a little breadboard and discovered the secret was to turn on the internal pullups in the ESP at the setup interval. This did the trick for the breadboard. When I moved the real thing to the shop and hooked it up to the sensor lines these was nothing. I tried a few different programs but nothing. I may have to get out the scope.
For dinner tonight we made Cooking Light's Coconut curry Chicken Soup. This took quite a bit of prep time with cooking noodles, snow peas and spinach then making the broth mixture with onions, spices, chicken broth and coconut milk. Then the two mixtures were combined with red pepper flakes. The end result was well worth it. We had the soup with half a bottle of Shiraz.