Check this out... ESP-NOW (communication protocol)

dynamicdave · 22 January 2026 18:53

dynamicdave · 22 January 2026 19:58

I think it might be possible to construct a ESP32-NOW Gateway...
[ESP-NOW Nodes] ---> [ESP32-S2 Gateway] ---> [MQTT Broker] ---> Node-RED

Possible experiment for the weekend.

Sean-McG · 22 January 2026 23:47

Dave, this has been around for some time -

github.com/arendst/Tasmota

info/xdrv_57_tasmesh.md

development

# TASMESH

This driver provides the ability to move TASMOTA-devices out of the WLAN by using ESP-NOW to communicate bidirectional with an internal protocol.

Thus the workload for the WLAN-router is reduced and with the reduced overhead the local 2.4-GHz-band will be freed of some traffic. Power consumption of the nodes will be reduced significantly allowing better battery powered projects with TASMOTA.
Automatic payload encryption is applied using the WiFi-password1 as the key. A maximum of 32 bytes of this password is used for the ChaCha20Poly1305 authenticated encryption as the key.

As ACK/NACK messages seem to be not reliable on both ESP-platforms, the method "send-and-pray" is used.


## Working principle

An ESP32 is needed as gateway/broker to connect the nodes (typically an ESP8266) to the WLAN. The ESP32 will receive the MQTT-topic of every node and subscribe to it as a proxy.
If a MQTT-message in the form of 'cmnd/node_topic/...' is received, the broker will automatically send this to the referring node via ESP-NOW.
The broker will automatically send time messages to all nodes.

The nodes will send their MQTT-messages back to the broker via ESP-NOW.

## Enabling the driver

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dceejay · 23 January 2026 00:07

See also Super Simple ESPNow to Wi-Fi / MQTT Gateway : 7 Steps - Instructables

bakman2 · 23 January 2026 04:57

esp-now is nice, except for one downside (to me) - a message is limited to 250 bytes, which should be sufficient for many applications but it takes away some flexibility.

dynamicdave · 23 January 2026 15:29

Couldn't wait until the weekend - had to have a play.
I've managed to create, using Micro-Python, a script for a 'now_sender' and a 'now_gateway'.
Note: You will need to change the suffix from .txt to .py as the Forum doesn't allow Python files.

now_gateway.txt (2.0 KB)
now_sender_v1.txt (1.4 KB)

The scripts will auto-discover the MAC addresses needed for communication.
Just need to make sure the sender is on the same WiFi channel as the Gateway to MQTT.

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Check this out... ESP-NOW (communication protocol)

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