Case for ESP32-C3 supermini with external antenna (bluetooth proxy) + night lamp

Make a tiny and powerful Bluetooth proxy for under 5 EUR! It can even double as a night lamp.

This is a simple case for an ESP32-C3 supermini with an external glue-on antenna. Ideal as a Home assistant Bluetooth proxy. There's space for hiding the extra antenna wire as well as space to glue the antenna. There's even a hole in the case if you'd need to glue the antenna on the other side. And! If you use the linked ESP, you can make use of the nicely placed hole in the lid to expose the RGB LED. I use it as a motion triggered night lamp. Plus I plugged it into the passthrough USB port of an IKEA Trådfri Zigbee router to get the most of the one USB charger port I have available. :-)

Using an ESP with an external antenna helps greatly if you want to proxy Bluetooth to your Home Assistant. This case lets you do it on the cheap and saves space. You can even use a stiff USB connector so the whole thing holds in a USB power supply. A dab of hot glue is recommended to keep the ESP in place.

Note: In my photo, I use horizontal polarisation of the antenna, which works perfectly for the BT proxy (the range increase is huge compared to a normal ESP32 with a PCB antenna). It may not be ideal for extending WiFi range, tho. If you need that, I recommend rotating the antenna 90 degrees.

Note 2: I did not see any difference between using the glue-on dipole (the one this case is designed for) and a normal external stick antenna.

Printed in fire-suppressing PETG.

ESP with antenna: https://aliexpress.com/item/1005007685790119.html 
Connector: https://aliexpress.com/item/1005007163098902.html (choose the right one)