The Hub 3 - an ESPNow to Wi-Fi / MQTT gateway

[@WillYork]

Well now I just gotta convince myself I need this lol. Great job!!

[@huanhenry344]

It would be nice to integrate ESPNOW protocol and ESPHOME.

[@benp7328]

This looks awesome, I don't see the PCB design files anywhere, unless I missed them? Could you make them available, so I can send them to a service like PCBway, and get them made, rather than going through the layout etc myself?

[@damedaE90]

Great Job! Does the Hub Work bidirectional? E.g. can you send Data to the Nodes?

[@MrDIYca]

It can be but the sensors are in deep sleep the majority of the time

[@晴天雨-d3u]

Excellent project, when testing the temperature, mqtt cannot be used and no message can be obtained. The door sensor is normal.

[@marcus_w0]

Are you sure that you don't mix up flash and eeprom capabilties? Eeproms have only a few writecycles, flash normally use load balancing to come by this. A SD card is also flash.

[@gadjetsvideo]

brilliant project, I have a couple of designs for wireless window/door transmitters using the ESP12 and ESP-NOW but I'm using the reed switch as it is an industry standard and I've had no issues with it, you can also buy a plastic encased version which is much more robust. I was toying with the idea af a receiver/Gateway but in the end I plugged a Wemos D1 mini into my Raspberry Pi that runs Node Red and I send notifications via Pushover to my phone and I'm playing around with a couple of different MQTT dashboards on my phone as well, having said that I really like the user interface you've created.

[@MrDIYca]

Thank you!

[@ferencszabo3504]

Man your works are awesome. I'm using your Mrdiy Sound with I2S and it's been a bless! It's the most stable part of my automatisation stuff! Just out of curiosity, the range for the esp NOW mode in the real life is better then the common WIFI mode?

[@MrDIYca]

Glad you like them! Hardware being equal, I would guess they would be roughly the same.

[@rfdave3980]

Is using MQTT the best way or maybe the only way. Is there a integration for Home Assistant? I just started getting into ESP-NOW. Thank you for your work it is so interesting.

[@annoorkhan4219]

I complied your hub3 code. it complied successfully. But I cant underdressed the web part.

[@gamingclipsonly3118]

great job sir, Im tying to use your mqtt gateway code of version 3 but I don't know where to replace ssid password mqtt server in the code. please can you help. I tried changing in few places but no luck. Please guide me sir.

[@rumpelstilzchen963]

Great project ! Can you share which Altium Libraries do you use for modelling ? I am looking forward for your next projects.

[@MrDIYca]

I don't use Altium. That was from easyeda.

[@daledriver5469]

I would buy the hub 3 in a heartbeat as soon you have contact and temperature sensors available.

[@MrDIYca]

Soon I will have the sensors but the Hub is now sold out. Maybe I should have made more :)

[@daledriver5469]

@@MrDIYca Another suggestion, you could sell unassembled pcb, and I'm one of those who don't mind putting the rest together because I find it therapeutic.

[@sshah876]

This is great, I am just wondering is there a way to connect it through serial interface to homeassistant/mqttserver, I do not use wifi in my iot setup. Additionally if a gpio/switch could be toggled at sensor esp, it would make this perfect for my setup, perhaps Hub4? or could this tweaked?.... Cheers

[@AndrzejRoszkowski]

there are "spring loaded" connectors, also known as "pogo pins", i think it would be better for "programmer board" than regular pins :)

[@MrDIYca]

Thanks for your suggestion. I tried them a while back but for some odd reason, they don't solder well. They keep falling off ... maybe I bought the wrong kind? not sure

[@AndrzejRoszkowski]

@@MrDIYca do not have any right now, yet i think there are two kinds - THT and for mounting directly on a wire, those THT required small trick - first solder "as is", even if they look like Tower of Pisa, then rotate board to point those pins up, and heat joint again... i've found that on YT some time ago... after struggling with ;)

[@200sxgrazor]

Awesome project :) One question if I may, Is it not possible to use one ESP device that handles all the the ESP-Now receiver, Wifi Bridge, MQTT and Web Server functions?

[@MrDIYca]

In theory, Yes! In practice, you will lose a lot of night sleep :)

[@zyghom]

I think I managed to have 1 esp to work as both: receiver, sender (if needed) as well as gateway - so 3 in 1. Of course the precondition is: the same wifi channel for both: ESPNow and AP. But that is good because when you set fixed channel on AP (and on esp) then wifi connection from esp to AP is around 100ms. Anyway, the idea of gateway and ESPNow is great because now, the sensor wakes up, measures what is needed, sends to receiver and goes to sleep - all in around 200ms. With 5uA hibernation current, now the battery can really live for long time.

[@MrDIYca]

Yes, this can work but doesn't for me as my APs change channels all the time for better performance but if you can keep these fixed it could work

[@PhG1961]

Great ingenuity !

[@patrickdk77]

generally need a 470uf cap cause they take lot of power when flashing. more if your powering other things also while programming. and some of those adapters dont put out a lot of ma to power devices.

[@MrDIYca]

Yes, not enough current.

[@yorks_atheist3069]

cool gateway design can you pass MQTT messages out across espnow side for motor control ?

[@MrDIYca]

The hardware can support it but it needs to be coded in.

[@herberthaas5471]

I´m using a modified version of your hub1 version since long time. I´ve added more values like you did now for temperature and humidity. you should add some values more which makes it more universal for other kind of sensors. In my modified version i use 4 data points because i also have sensors with air pressure or monitor my car batteries and the temperature in the car. other sensor monitors rain water cistern level with an ultrasonic distance sensor. So it would be really nice if you add 1 or 2 more variables for mqtt values. Your new user interface looks great, i want to use it but currently i´m too lazy to modify the code again since everything runs fine :-)

[@thenextproblem8001]

Hey man great work! What do you do when you need to add another sensor the system? Update the code? İs there a more elegant way to do ? Auto pairing with sensors?

[@MrDIYca]

New sensors are automatically added - nothing to configure

[@thenextproblem8001]

@@MrDIYca let me dive in then 🎉🎉👌

[@EdHayes3]

Have you thought about a buck converter for power vs the LDO? There's quite a few options for a SOT-23-5,

[@MrDIYca]

Are you referring to the Hub? Efficiency was not really a priority since it is always plugged in.

[@EdHayes3]

@@MrDIYca Correct; the hub. Always nice to make things more efficient! With a 500ma load, and $0.11 /kwh, would save ~$1 a year with the more efficient regulator.

[@MrDIYca]

True, maybe an improvement for a future version :) Thanks!

[@grantnlee]

What's the best way to adapt the Hub to accept other categories of input, such as my HVAC equipment? (I've used the temp sensor code with an ESP8266, but would like to setup a distinct Group for monitoring equipment.) I'm also curious if you have any pointers on SD cards. I cannot seem to get the hub to detect the SD card. Cool device otherwise, the Hub is working well.

[@MrDIYca]

That is awesome, good to hear. Thank you for sharing. For the HVAC, I would probably add a new group "GROUP_XXX " and update the structure to reflect the type of data you want to communicate or maybe reuse some of the structure elements. I am not 100% happy with how I did the structure elements. I might change it in the future but I kept for backward compatibility. For the SD Card, maybe try formatting it with another OS. I had a hard time getting my 3D printer to see my SD card. It turned out the MacOS formatting tool didn't cut it. No clue why. I formatted it as FAT on Windows and it worked. Just curious, are you trying to tunnel the HVAC data through the Hub as compared to sending it directly over Wi-Fi from the HVAC system?

[@grantnlee]

@@MrDIYca My heating system is not wifi enabled (older oil fired boiler, which is common here in New England). They are notorious for tripping out on safety and I want an alert if it does so while I am not home. And I also want to track the run time of the boiler as a way to compute oil consumption, to make sure I do not forget to call for more. I need to access this info remotely (e.g. while on vacation) so am feeding data to InfluxData's cloud service. So I have ESPs feeding the hub, which routes to Mosquitto. Then NodeRed is subscribing to the topic and writing to Influx in the cloud. I'm not able to attempt to upload any changes since the repository does not specify/include a key icon library... :-(

[@albacklund8413]

I am having difficulty trying to compile your v3 gateway code. I believe the problem is with the SD libraries because the error messages state the architecture or board are not supported. Any suggestions?

[@MrDIYca]

Maybe open a gitlab issue and I will try to help you there

[@leandroebner1405]

@@MrDIYca same here, tried literally hours to get code on my hub v3. The receiver code (esp07s) seems to be flashed witout problems, but I just cant get your basic mqtt code to work :/ now my hub 3 is unusable

[@Robert1984kappert]

When available I would like to buy the hub, and switch sensors (only challange is I don't live in North America, but in The Netherlands :-( ), any plans on international shipments?

[@MrDIYca]

Unfortunately not anytime soon. Sorry. This VAT thing just over complicates things.

[@EduardoBeecheO]

I want to buy one but there is no stock for the hub 3, when do you plan to have it back on inventory?

[@MrDIYca]

I don't think that I'll be doing another batch, sorry. The PCB is available though if you want to build it yourself - store.mrdiy.ca/p/thehub_ver3_pcb/

[@zzzzzzz7633]

Can you tell me the programmer you used as i don't want to push buttons while flashing a program.

[@MrDIYca]

Go to store.mrdiy.ca/p/thehub_ver3 and scroll to the "To program ESP-07S/12F" section.

[@zzzzzzz7633]

@@MrDIYca thanks a lot..... 😀

[@zzzzzzz7633]

hey i have made all the connection as per schematic but esp12 not going to programming mode. error shows time out.

[@MrDIYca]

Are you using all 6 FTDI pins as shown in the schematic or just Rx and Tx to program?

[@zzzzzzz7633]

@@MrDIYca all six,. I googled it and some blog posted additional circuit required.

[@MrDIYca]

Can you just remove the ESP and program it by itself?

[@vinni5497]

Fantastic

[@saivenkatbalabadruni]

Why can't we use same esp fir gate way and esp now

[@MrDIYca]

Were you able to get that working reliably?

[@saivenkatbalabadruni]

@@MrDIYca Yes yesterday I have tested it for a while it works fine. I don't know what happens for a longer time I have seen it acting wired I need to check it again as u have good system I will share the source if u need