Remote ESPHOME node without port forwarding or VPN?

ESPHome
1

Hey everyone,
I’m thinking about setting up an ESPHOME node at my parents place, 100s of kms away. So the setup is basically something like this:

esphome_remote
esphome_remote1346×698 15.5 KB

I’d like to understand the options of the node communicating with my HA setup WITHOUT having to setup VPNs, or open ports for mqtt etc. I’ve seen threads mentioning webhooks via nabu casa, but as my HA instance is not remotely reachable via nabu casa (I don’t use the service), that one is probably out.

Thoughts that I had:

  • does MQTT still support “one-way traffic” without port forwarding? I could setup a cloud MQTT broker, and could maybe at least send data from the node to my setup
  • run a random webserver somewhere in the cloud that provides https REST endpoints to send and poll data (self-built)

Is there anything else that works with ESPHOME and HA which would allow me to connect the 2 “ends of the line” without having to open ports or do other network setup changes?
Oh, one thing: I don’t need the esphome node to show up like a normal device in my HA instance, I just want to be able to send data back and forth. No OTA updates, no device status, just data exchance.

Thanks a lot in advance! :slight_smile: Cheers!

2

You need some kind of portforward or remote VPN service.
Cloudflare have a tunnel service which might be able to do it.

3

without open ports, point-to-point between ha and esphome target is impossible unless you setup a middle-man. put your mqtt messages on a web server with specific functionality to forward mqtt’s ha<–>esphome will work, but you need some time for this :slight_smile:
and you can at least give some security to this thing
br