Hi all, I am using Home Assistant Core (venv install on a Raspberry Pi) as a security system (among other things) with door/window sensors based on ESPHome integration (NOTE: here I use the word ‘sensor’ for simplicity: what I have are ESP32-based development boards like the Wemos Lolin32 with vibration sensors, switch reed sensor, temperature/humidity sensors). Everything works fine on the main WiFi house connection and I can access HA even when I’m outside (DuckDNS and port forwarding configured).
Goal: Get some sort of control (e.g. have a monitoring report of the status of the sensors) when not at home and there’s a power outage and/or main WiFi doesn’t work. Even if I cannot access HA from outside during power outages, a Telegram report that runs every x minutes would be fine.
Configuration: The Raspberry Pi is configured to work with an UPS and the sensors have a battery back-up. So power-wise I think I’m ok. I also set up an Android phone with a data SIM as a mobile hotspot to which the Raspberry Pi and the sensors automatically connect when main WiFi is not working. The Wifi configuration in the ESPHome firmware of the sensors is:
wifi:
networks:
- ssid: !secret wifi_ssid_main
password: !secret wifi_password_main
priority: 10
- ssid: !secret wifi_ssid_hs
password: !secret wifi_password_hs
priority: 5
manual_ip:
static_ip: 192.168.1.14
gateway: 10.0.0.1
subnet: 255.255.255.0
#api:
I have set up a manual_ip to increase connectivity speed given that the sensors wake up for 30 seconds every 30 minutes unless the window/door opens. The api section is commented out as I use MQTT.
Now, let’s get to the reasons for this post. When on mobile hotspot connection I have 3 issues at the moment:
Issue 1: I can’t access HA from the Raspberry Pi using its IP address or things like http://homeassistant.local:8123.
Issue 2: The sensors are connected to the mobile hotspot but their IP seems empty (from the Wifi configuration of the Android phone I can see their MAC address only). This is probably because the IP address range when on mobile hotspot is 192.168.43.240/24 and I have set a manual_ip outside of that range? However, the main Wifi IP address range is 192.168.1.10/24, thus I am forced to set that manual_ip if I want to improve the connectivity speed of the.
Issue 3: Even if issues 1 and 2 were fixed, how would the sensors communicate with the Mosquitto broker installed on the Raspberry Pi which has an IP address outside of the range available from the mobile hotspot connection?
Thanks a lot for all the patience and help.
Valerio