Stupid question, but wouldn’t it be possible to connect the “Host” ESP with usb to HA?
What I was thinking is to have 2 esp devices.
esp-now slave → esp-now gateway → serial/modbus → esp with ha
Its a shame that you would need a extra esp device but part of the game i guess 
If you choose an ESP device with UART on the USB port, then it is probably possible.
what is that?
ESP-Now can actually run with just one ESP device as a hub, but it puts some limitations on the setup.
If only one device is used, then ESP-Now and WiFi is required to use the same frequency and since the frequency is hardcoded in the ESP_Now code, then it means you WiFi also needs to use a fixed frequency.
Sharing WiFi and ESP-Now on the same frequency might also be problematic, since a high load on the WiFi would then interfere with the ESP-Now.
A better way might be an ESP device with an ethernet board and then it can be MQTT, serial over TCP, webhooks or whatever to connect to HA.
Seems like esp-now is more limited than I thought it would be. Perhaps I should look at a different solution. Bit of a bummer though but it is what it is.
It is not ESP-Now that is limited, but the hardware.
With just one ESP chip you have only one radio.
People link two ESP chips together to get around that limitation, so one chip can run the ESP-Now on one frequency and the WiFi can run on another frequency.
Hi sorry, got sidetracked
Do you have an example how I can include espnow in esphome config?
Yes, so that was my idea; but if my normal wifi on the 2.5 band can interfere with it then that will be a pain to troubleshoot.
This problem will be fine in my home, But I dont want to install this at a friends house 3 hours away and then be the tech support for it.
Well, go for the two ESP solution then.
One doing the ESP-Now part and one doing the WiFi part.
If the one doing the ESP-Now part is utilizing the UART as the interface for the WiFi part, then the WiFi part should be able to run ESPHome with a UART custom component.
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ripnetuk-esphome-easynow
This is the only library that works as per my knowledge. I was able to communicate between two esp32 and use HA just for dashboard. All critical applications are handled by esp32, one being gateway and other being sensors posting to gateway. It has deep sleep and OTA update feature to prevent from deep sleep when OTA update is demanded. Just loved it.