ESP-Now VS Farm-Data-Relay-System

There's some other good tutorials for it as well, https://randomnerdtutorials.com/?s=esp-now and https://github.com/HarringayMakerSpace/ESP-Now

For power, I'd recommend Li-Ion primary (non-rechargeable) cells, whatever size works best for you. Those have essentially zero internal leakage and a 5 year shelf-life. If you've done it all correctly, it's conceivable it could be 5 years before you need to change the batteries (on top of a 30' ladder). You'd need a small high-efficiency buck converter to drop the 6.8V batteries down to 3.3V for the ESP, with a separate switched 5V linear regulator (one with a SHUTDOWN pin) to power the servos when they need to be driven. The ESP will consume 16-20uA in Deep Sleep, and the buck converter should mostly be off, except for when the ESP wakes every 3.5 hours (maximum Deep Sleep interval). If you're already using ESP-NOW to talk to the vent ESPs, then you could do a 'vent changed' check every time it wakes, otherwise it's more efficient to go back to Sleep quickly and wait until 12-24 hours has elapsed before you fire up a full WiFi connection. Not counting buck inefficiencies and servo movements, the ESP would only consume about 175mAh per year. The batteries will expire before they empty, maybe in 6-7 years.

I presume you've seen Anthony Elder's examples? He got a single ESP to act as hub by restarting it. In a low-traffic environment that'd work. There was discussion and a new PR to speed up the reconnect time using WIFI_RESUME that's been merged in the git repo, which should make a single-ESP hub faster to respond. You'd need a little fault checking in case the BSSID changes of course, but for the normal case things would be faster.

FDRS is a custom built system on top of ESPNow (and lora, wifi, etc) that makes the messaging simple. https://github.com/timmbogner/Farm-Data-Relay-System https://youtu.be/6JI5wZABWmA

I second this.. i just discovered FDRS and am in the process of hooking a remote gate up to my Home Assistant server with a couple of heltec ESP32/Lora modules. Clicked through because this sounds like it could've been an alternative method of doing the same thing BUT the website lists no hardware, no documentation, no pricing... do you expect every prospective customer to have a conversation with you about what they need?

Have a look at FDRS, it should simplify your project's needs greatly.

Shared by: https://github.com/timmbogner/Farm-Data-Relay-System/blob/main/README.md

I'd look at FDRS, I feel like it would fit your situation very well. Depending on the physical layout of our hives, you might have 1 node (w/ weight/t&h/audio sensors) per hive, one repeater and one gateway. You may not need the repeater, or you may need more than one. Using ESPNow, you can get 300m line of sight (even further if using ESPNow LR), Lora you can go much further.

Another FDRS user contributed an example using a DS3231 that you can look off of here.

I have been working on this project for a while, but only recently added controller functionality in an official capacity. As such, I updated my infographics and wanted to share them with the class: UART, MQTT.

This is a shameless plug, as it's a video about my own project. I actually have a soil moisture sensor experiment underway however, which I documented in this wiki page.