Alternate Communication Channels

[voicevon]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.
I have an sensor far away from my house(let's say 1km distance).There is no wifi, even no AC power.
Describe the solution you'd like
Will esphomelib support LuRaWan , or GSM connection to server?

Additional context
Right now, esphomelib has organized all data to an object mqtt_message(include topic ,payload, qos, etc.), Then it called publish() method in mqtt_client_ which is an AsyncMqttClient without source code, but inside depended library. Obviously the mqtt_client binds AsyncTcp+Wifi. I would like to name it "Channel".

GSM module connect to esp32 through UART (another channel), All communication between the esp32 and GSM module is AT-commands.

Imaging Esphomelib mqtt component has a member called channel. Just modify the value of channel form wifi to gsm. The esp32 will turn to the new channel. Because I have tested the node under channel_wifi, so the node should be no issue on other channel. Isn't it awesome?

[OttoWinter]

Yes theoretically that would be possible, but it's not a focus of this project at this time - and if this happens then with the native esphomelib api (#322).

One problem with your "channel" simplification is that most protocols don't just need this abstraction, they also need the abstraction of connections. For example while MQTT theoretically can work with any channel you like, it still mandates that this "channel" have a few features:

• Error correction
• Closing/Opening a connection (like a TCP socket - not possible directly through UART)

So this would require another abstraction on top of "channels".

This will definitely not happen any time soon (and by that I mean probably not in the next year or two) as it's just a ton of work to get it to work, with honestly just a few use-cases. Esphomelib is made for homes, not for 1km distances.

[thompsa]

The ESP32 has an experimental ppp client which would solve the issue of serial not having open/close schematics. https://docs.espressif.com/projects/esp-idf/en/latest/api-reference/kconfig.html#config-ppp-support

[dj-fiorex]

2 years have passed, almost 3, is there any news? i would like to implement a LoRa comunication channel!

[nagyrobi]

Making progress in esphome/esphome#8187, and first implementation is for UART: esphome/esphome#8214. This is a generalised approach, which will make possible to develop simpler components for exchanging data directly between nodes by any means, like TCP, ESP-Now, LoRa, etc.