Tailscale on esphome device

ESPHome
1

I have a bit of a random idea… could tailscale be installed on an ESPhome device so that device can be on any internet connection anywhere and integrate back to my HA server with tailscale?

i found this GitHub - alfs/tailscale-iot: Tailscale connectivity for ESP32 devices which looks like its a start

im thinking of building a device that has an esp32 with a web portal for config. this device will be on a boat with starlink… but i want to be able to log to my server, and i want to connect my phone to my tailscale and access it from anywhere… i dont want to install tailscale on a router or anything like that… just want to give my dad a device he can connect to his wifi and away it goes…

Has anyone seen this or tried using it? would be nice to have it as a component we can just pull in as needed!

2

Not directly what you’re asking for, but this already exists:

Obviously would require setting up a VPN first.

3

Unless the ESP is in a very secure physical location (which I doubt considering your question) this sounds like a great way to steal the credentials of your VPN because the firmware from the ESP can easily be read back.

This is exactly the opposite of a separate IOT network for security reasons.

4

Not sure if esphome supports it, but espresso and external flash support encryption

5

Yeah I guess so… hmmm

wireguard sounds too hard to setup without ports and routes etc.

would be nice if we could just use nabu casa or something to have a remote esphome device on a remote network… yet still be able to log data from it and control it remotely.

6

I’ve been following this project which had a major release today:

Production-ready Tailscale VPN client for the ESP32 platform.

This would probably be a good starting point for an EspHome component.

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