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Please excuse the very vague title, I had no idea how to condense my question into a title.

Unit A - ESP32

Unit B - what I am looking for

HOME_WIFI - The wifi network broadcasted within my home.

UNIT_B_WIFI - The wifi broadcasted by Unit B for Unit A to connect too

I currently have an ESP32(Unit A) device that I have setup and programmed to connect to a Wifi point and send data to a specific IP through HTTP requests. I currently have been testing that using my normal wifi within my home, but now I need to set up my relay.

What I need for Unit B, is to act as a Wifi hotspot so that Unit A can connect to and send information to it VIA HTTP requests. I also need Unit B to be able to connect to the actual Wifi broadcasted within the home that has access to the internet so that it can send the information it received from Unit A through the internet.

My thought process here is similar to how a cell-phone hotspot works. An unknown device connects to your Cellphone (which is the hotspot), and then the cell phone uses your cellular data to access the internet. I am hoping there is a way to have a Unit B with 2 wifi modules, one to broadcast as a wifi network to RECEIVE information from Unit A, and another wifi module to connect to HOME_WIFI and send that information to the internet.

The reason I have it set up like this, is that there are multiple Unit A's outside in this system and they all need a common point of access within the house, Unit B. So I just need a way for n Unit A's to connect to Unit B through Wifi, and to have Unit B still have to connect to HOME_WIFI and send information out over the internet.

system controllers

Questions:

  • Is there a specific name for what I am trying to accomplish here?
  • Is there a board/unit that I can use that can accomplish this? If so what would you recommend?
  • Is there a better way to accomplish what I am trying to do?
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  • Does unit A need to use wifi, would bluetooth work? Does unit B process the data in anyway? e.g. could all of unit B's work be done "in the cloud" and A just connect to the home wifi directly? Any reason not to just use a normal WiFi extender to improve access to the outside of the house?
    – hardillb
    Sep 28, 2020 at 10:35
  • Also have you considered a mesh network approach?
    – hardillb
    Sep 28, 2020 at 10:38
  • @hardillb Unit A I would prefer to use Wifi just to give a larger range than bluetooth. Unit B DOES process the data and allows for manual inputs from within the home. A can't connect to Wifi directly to send it to the cloud because it still needs a manual base within the home to control. I was hoping to use Unit B like a Wifi Extender so all the data from the n Unit As all communicate to B. No idea what a mesh network approach is but I will look into it now to see!
    – 97WaterPolo
    Sep 28, 2020 at 22:55

1 Answer 1

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If I have understood your question correctly, you want a wifi repeater in-between the esp and the home wifi connection.

You can accomplish that with off the shelf devices. (Routers that support third party firmware, devices boxed as repeaters, etc)

Or you could just use another esp. (like the esp32 wroom) and this github project: https://github.com/martin-ger/esp_wifi_repeater Just don't expect bandwidth miracles from the esp devices. If you need more than 4/5 Mbits of bandwidth, go with a device that was made to do this job! You can get a DD-WRT or openWRT firmware capable device on eBay for a couple bucks.

Before you buy a device, give this a once over: https://superuser.com/questions/1332033/actual-repeater-vs-router-as-repeater

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