Radio Remote with ESP for call bell system?

ESPHome
1

Hi

I’m trying to implement a call bell system with ESP. (for the ones not aware of what is call bell, it’s a system used in large properties and that basically consists of little wireless buttons that owner can push and then it rings in pantry for staff indicating room it originates from).
At first I was thinking to build each remote button based on ESP but time to to get out of deep sleep, connect Wifi and send message is way too long ! So I’m thinking to use regular Radio Remote in 433/418Mhz and use a radio receiver linked with an ESP in each room to receive infos of remotes pushed.
Unhappy I can’t find any indication of compatible radio receiver that can be used with ESPHome. Any suggestions ? both for radio receiver and radio push buttons ?
I’ll share later the code used in ESPHome and in HA to build the call bell feature once project has moved forward in something functional :wink:

Thanks

Vincèn

2

Instrument of capitalist repression?

How about some xiaomi buttons?

1 Like
3

Which ones are you thinking about ? because from what I remember it’s only bluetooth no ? and so pretty short range compared with Wifi :confused:

4

You could give esp-now a shot. There is a custom component avaialable for esphome.

I made a test couple of weeks ago and went around 400m and did receive the signal some what reliable. Only backdraw is there is no backchannel acknowledgment available at this point. So you need to cook something yourself that the button presser (king/slave master/you name it) does receive a feedback that his call was successfully made…

5

Thanks for that suggestion, I was not aware of that capability on ESP but I don’t really need mesh as I can put a wired or Wifi 433Mhz radio receiver in each room so it should be fine for that :wink:

6

It’s not about a mesh, you would use a classical broadcast for your setup.

The thing is that it just needs around 200ms to boot/wake up and send the package(s) with esp-now compared to a classic wifi setup (wpa2-psk) with mqtt which easily takes up to 10 seconds…

And for the receiver part you don’t need a extra device at all - any esp device which is present can be used (esp-now works simultaneously with a normal WiFi on the esp…)

7

I was talking about the zigbee ones.

8

What range do you need to achieve your use case?

9

The dev version of ESPHome now supports the Sonoff 433MHz bridge. I have 3 of them across my property to support a config similar to yours.

I am currently running Tasmota on them but am seriously considering converting to ESPHome, so if you go this way would be interested to see how it goes.

10

Would think short would be more idea and more reliable. If you were already planning to put a receiver unit in each room that would relay the information to a central unit then bluetooth would be ideal, it would span the room with no risk to trigger another rooms receiver. A well placed pi0 could handle the bluetooth input with whatever wireless button choice you decide to pair with it.