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Re:ESPHome by cyberax on Wednesday April 24, 2024 @10:51AM (#40145065)
It would be great to support more PoE devices and Ethernet-based provisioning. And also alternative wired buses, such as BACNET or a generic RS-485.

The other axis: Zigbee devices and battery power. ESPs can be used with batteries, but right now it's not a great fit.

And the last feature: better reuse support for custom devices. E.g. if I have 20 similar custom devices.

Re:ESPHome by wkat4242 on Wednesday April 24, 2024 @11:09AM (#40145287)
Yes the modules with rpi2040 and Ethernet would be so great to have supported.

I'm pretty unhappy with the WiFi 8266 modules I have. They regularly go into unavailable in home assistant for a few minutes even though my WiFi is working fine

Re:ESPHome by sirtaj on Wednesday April 24, 2024 @01:20PM (#40147158)
Could it be that they're simply idle sleeping to save power? My first ESPhome device confused me by dropping off and on and it turned out that was the problem, idle sleep was configured by default - the device would wake up, report its status and go back to sleep.
Re:ESPHome by wkat4242 on Wednesday April 24, 2024 @03:42PM (#40148686)
Hmm I don't know. It could be but it's very intermittent. Sometimes it happens a lot, sometimes it doesn't.

I'll try to find out the sleep settings though, thanks for the tip!

Re:ESPHome by epcoa on Wednesday April 24, 2024 @11:08AM (#40145275)
> generic RS-485

You can already hook up an RS-485 transceiver to the UART ports and use it today with the UART driver. Esphome also has a Modbus controller component. What are you referring to by “generic” RS-485 that isn’t available already?

Re:ESPHome by cyberax on Wednesday April 24, 2024 @11:44AM (#40145782)
RS-485 is a shared bus, so you need to use some kind of a protocol to arbitrate access, and to make sure you don't flash unintended devices.

BACnet is one example, but other protocols can work too.

Re:ESPHome by epcoa on Wednesday April 24, 2024 @12:48PM (#40146756)
Re:ESPHome by cyberax on Wednesday April 24, 2024 @04:21PM (#40149087)
It doesn't allow firmware updates over modbus. The same would also apply to Zigbee.