Hi, does anyone know if it is possible to connect two ESP8266 together via

Electronics
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Hi, does anyone know if it is possible to connect two ESP8266 together via a serial connection i.e. they can communicate with each other over a physical connection.

This would allow each ESP to be connected to a different Wi-Fi network, or one running ESP-Now and using the other ESP WiFi connected device as the outbound Internet gateway.

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I can’t see why not. Serial is serial. Just connect rx to tx and vice versa.

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Question is, which protocol is qualified and able for such a routing process over serial line.

4

So you want a wireless esp-now gateway.

Yes, you can do that, but since they only appear to support 2.4GHz, you’re going to have to find out what channel ESP-now uses and keep off it. The documentation is pretty confusing on that.

Plus, if you live in a neighbourhood like mine, deal with the 40+ AP’s screaming at you. So you really don’t want to be unencrypted with your ESP-now.

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@Markus_Illenseer the ESP32 connected to WiFi will transmit the string received via the serial connection to a known address. The ESP-now message string is parsed by the ultimate end point, communication is one way outbound and always to the same address.

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I just played around… flash them both as transparent serial bridges using the awesome esp-link firmware and it’s easy as pie. You can find esp link on github

EDIT: eep-link is only for ESP8266’s - for an ESP32 you can use https://github.com/AlphaLima/ESP32-Serial-Bridge

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That’s ESP32-only code, no?

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The easytransfer library works well on the ESP 8266

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OK!

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@Markus_Illenseer Yes, if you want to use ESP8266s use the ESP-Link software - it’s all done for you and is fkn awesome! https://github.com/jeelabs/esp-link

It’s very complete and encompasses much more than just serial bridging - you can control UARTs, change buffer, boot remotely, send and receive MQTT messages (controlling functions, for example), run in AP host mode, or connect to existing APs, all through the web portal.

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An ESP32 can be connected as a client to a wifi network and be able to receive ESP now packets at the same time. I have a project that we use at our hacker space to send ESP now data from a battery powered ESP8266 to an ESP32 connected to the hackerspace wifi. The ESP32 needs to be connected on the same wifi channel as the ESP Now, it seems. Project link: https://revspace.nl/EspNowSkip