Hi there, just wanted to tell you about a nice "thing" I found the other day
I'm personally very fond of ESPHome that allows me to configure & use those small devices based on ESP32. I simply love how easy it is to set them up and let them communicate with Node-RED
Now I discovered that some of them supports Tailscale !!! That is fantastic, it allows you to build up your network with remote devices that could be installed anywhere they have access to a wifi network. Like your summer house, or boat, or car...I just played a bit and configured a remote display and it worked right away (I could use it as an information panel at home, showing the status of some sensors in my summer house if I want). This is just an example, you could have many ESP32 devices spread around collecting data of various kind and transfer it to your main system for calculations & analyzes
The device I played with is an ESP32-S3. The limitations are that most older ESP32's wont work, you need them to have PSRAM. I have tried with ESP32-C3 as well as ESP32-C6 and they did not work
Here is the source where you can read about and enjoy it!
I have numerous ESP32-S2 and ESP32-C3 based nodes (running Micro-Python) collecting data and sending it via MQTT to Node-RED. It would be great if there was a way to "drop" Tailscale into the "mix" - I'll have to investigate that avenue.
Well, it could, I suppose, be on a different network rather than on the Internet. But no, I think that is indeed the main advantage.
For example, the ability to put sensors into an older person's (aging parents?) house and safely get the data locally.
In a more commercial sense, the ability to have different protected networks with sensors all reporting back to a central, remote, location might be interesting.
Of course, you still have the issue that you might put sensors into less secure locations. Tailscale is, at its heart, a VPN and as I've often said, a VPN is only as secure as its weakest point. ESP32 based sensors would indeed be a very weak link.
Personally, if I were to make use of this, I would want a separate Tailscale network with a secured bridge somewhere locally and I would make sure I didn't accidentally put more trust in the incoming data than was warrented.
I guess it would be possible to build secure, tamper-evident enclosures, but that would be costly. You would, as a minimum, ensure that any security info such as a login would be kept in memory only and ensure that opening the enclosure kills the power to the ESP32. You might need to add local battery power though to cover temporary power dropouts which would then otherwise require a visit to set the connection back up. A lot of work.
My setup uses a private global MQTT broker running on a virtual machine (VM) in the Oracle Cloud. Each node simply connects to a local Wi-Fi access point and publishes its data to the remote broker. This also allows Node-RED to send commands back to individual nodes, enabling them to perform specific tasks or update their operating parameters remotely.
At present, @zenofmud in Boston, my grandson, and I in the UK all have nodes built on my own custom-designed printed circuit boards. These nodes continuously measure and report temperature, humidity, barometric pressure, and ambient light levels through the shared MQTT infrastructure.
I would say no, not really. The idea here is to bring remote devices into a Tailscale network. In my thoughts I would eventually only use this in places I have under control.
But it is true as @TotallyInformation brings up, if you could get your hands on and crack/reverse engineer etc etc the ESP device so you could make your way into such a (Tailscale) network, the damage could be huge. So from that perspective, @dynamicdave's solution might be better provided you only publish non-sensitive data and the MQTT connection is "secure enough"
Tailscale has very good tooling , so very easy to deploy at scale - we are using it on a variety of devices from teltonika routers to end esp 32,devices. The consistent tooling whether within a lan or wan is pretty good
