ESPHome UART forwarding

ESPHome
1

I’m currently trying to get my Autonomous.ai desk integrated into Home Assistant, using ESPHome.
The Connection between the control panel and the desk controller is UART, my current progress so far:

Using this repository I was able to get a working ESPHome config going, allowing me to control the desk. When the ESP is not connected, I can also control the desk from the control panel, but as soon as I connect the ESP again, the control panel doesn’t work anymore.
I’m actually not that surprised, seeing as UART is not designed to work with more than 2 devices at the same time.

What I’m thinking of doing now, is using the ESP as a forward node for the UART messages, using 2 UART busses on the ESP itself. 1 bus connected to the control panel, the other to the desk. It seems I couldn’t find any examples on this yet, maybe nobody has done this before?

I think I should create a custom UART component (Custom UART Device — ESPHome), that depends on both UART busses, that would allow me to read data and write it to the other bus?

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2

Hello.
I am currently struggling with something similar.
Have You made any progres ?

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3

Take a look at ssieb’s “Man In the Middle”.

You can forward and inject UART.

I’ve also had some success without using a custom component using something similar to @mulcmu 's UART read approach.

uart:
  - id: uart_p #pendant side
    rx_pin: GPIO16  #Green wire | Transmits commands from pendant to robot via mitm uart_p. Wire confusingly (?) labelled RX on pendant!!!! 
    # tx_pin: GPIO17  #Yellow wire | Fowards messages from the robot to the pendant. Note: not used. Bypass used.
    baud_rate: 9600
    data_bits: 8
    stop_bits: 2
    parity: NONE
    rx_buffer_size: 256
    debug:
      direction: BOTH
      dummy_receiver: true
      after:
        timeout: 1ms
        # delimiter: "N"
      sequence:  
         #Used.
        - uart.write: #Write rx to tx.
            id: uart_r
            data: !lambda return bytes ;
        - lambda: 
            UARTDebug::log_string(direction , bytes);

  - id: uart_r #robot_side
    rx_pin: GPIO18 #Yellow wire tranmits data from robot to mitm rx uart_r
    tx_pin: GPIO19 #Green wire transmits/forwards commands from the pendant and mitm to the robot
    baud_rate: 9600
    data_bits: 8
    stop_bits: 2
    parity: NONE
    rx_buffer_size: 256
    debug:
      direction: BOTH
      dummy_receiver: true
      after:
        timeout: 1ms
      sequence:
        #Not Used.
        # - uart.write:
            # #Write rx to tx.
            # id: uart_p
            # data: !lambda return bytes ;
        - lambda: UARTDebug::log_string(direction, bytes);
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4

I checked the source code, the structure of this code is so simple, but the things it can do are amazing.

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