Help transferring ESPNow data to HA via serial

[tame wing]

I am in the process of building out a temperature probe array for my commercial kitchen. I can get all the esp32's to send the data, but now I need some guidance on getting it to post to HA via serial. My work IT WIFI has no mDNS protocol in place so I can send data TO the esp32's but can't get any readings from them, so the ESPNow would be a work around the WIFI configuration.

[calm night]

not sure why mDNS not being available is an issue? just use ip addresses.

but anyway: the easiest way to integrate an esp32 with home assistant is to use ESPhome. home assistant establishes the connection to the ESP32 to feed data back and forth.

this would mean each device could report via wifi directly.

however esphome doesnt (at least i dont think it does) support espnow and if you want to use espnow and just have a single device doing the reporting then i would probably consider adding another esp32 running esphome next to your "master" esp32.
send the data via serial from the master espnow esp32 to the esphome esp32 which you can then use to set up sensors which will get exposed to home assistant.

another idea that you could look at if you want to avoid wifi altogether is that you could use BLE. have the devices ping their data as BLE and pick it up via bluetooth adaptor

if you really want to use just serial then making some middleware to run separately or as an addon which then reports the data via MQTT perhaps?

[tame wing]

The problem with BLE is that all the stainless in the kitchen tends to interfere with the signal. You are right there isn't a direct integration for ESPNow with ESPHome. I think this is because most everyone that uses HA has control over their routers where I unfortunately do not.
Integrating the esp32's with ESPHome works, and we can do OTA on them but for some reason there is a problem with mDNS having the ESP32's forward any data back to HA even using IP addresses.

To further explain the set up I would have a ESPnow operating ESP32 receiving data and passing that through serial to another esp32 that would work as a bridge as a ESPHome device to communicate with HA. I just can't figure out how to program that second esp32. ESPHome defaults to WIFI as a form of communication.

And as far as MQTT goes, that would be the best option if I could figure out how to get the data from serial to MQTT because most "plug and play" coding for MQTT defaults to WIFI.

[calm night]

perhaps you could use a rpi running linux. have the esp send data via serial to the rpi's gpio. write something in python on the rpi that organises the data and sends it to an mqtt broker?

that would give you greater control on the reporting perhaps?

or run your own network with its own AP in the kitchen specifically for the esp's that way your not limited by whatever is going on on the corp network

you could try floating the question over on the esphome discord too, there are some clever people over there when it comes to building custom stuff - https://discord.gg/F6SuhYPZ

[tame wing]

Thanks @calm night ! I will definitely jump over there and check in with them too!