What board should I use?

[fredy]

Good morning, everyone.

I'm thinking about a home automation project using Olimex boards, and I have a lot of questions about which board would be best to use. Here's what I have in mind:

The idea would be to go through rooms/spaces where I would put a board with an ESP32, and these would connect or communicate with another Olimex board that would have a central server. Each room would be programmed individually and autonomously, without depending on each other. If one goes down, it would not affect the rest. If the central server goes down, the automations would continue to function locally. The communication protocol between each ESP in each room and the server would be mqtt.

What I would like to automate in each room is the following:

• Lighting and its switches. Essential
• Motion/presence sensor. Essential
• Temperature and humidity sensor. Secondary, to be added in the future
  
• Power outlets. Secondary, to be added in the future

As you can see, I need a few inputs and outputs. I have the following questions about which boards to use:

• I would like everything to be wired, i.e., not using Wi-Fi, or as little as possible.
• In each room, I would put the board either in the power box or in the communications box and try to run an Ethernet cable. I don't know which would be the best place.
  

I can think of several scenarios:

• Put the board in the electrical box: I would have power for the boards and the cables for the switches and lighting close at hand. I could also run an Ethernet cable here.
• If I have power cables nearby, I guess it wouldn't be necessary to use POE boards.

With all this in mind, I can see several boards that could work:

• ESP32-POE-ISO: it doesn't have IO, so I would have to use a MOD-IO board
• ESP32-POE2: It doesn't have IO, so I would have to use a MOD-IO board
• ESP32-EVB: It doesn't have digital inputs, and few relays, so I would have to use a MOD-IO board
• ESP32-C6-EVB: This board seems to be the most complete for my purpose, but it lacks an Ethernet port. I could try to do everything with Wi-Fi or add an Ethernet port if it's easy.
  

Which board do you think would be best to use so that everything is modular and independent?

Thank you very much in advance.
Best regards

[LubOlimex]

ESP32-POE-ISO, not sure about MOD-IO, maybe consider MOD-IO2, maybe consider lightning with own controller that can be controlled by digital 3.3V digital IO.

Also for sensor consider MOD-BME280 or even better MOD-ENV (it also has CS811 to measure air quality, which is pretty important I guess).

https://github.com/OLIMEX/ESP32-POE/tree/master/SOFTWARE/ARDUINO/ESP32-BME280-WEB

https://github.com/OLIMEX/ESP32-POE2/blob/main/SOFTWARE/ARDUINO/MOD-ENV-ESP32/MOD-ENV-ESP32.ino

[fredy]

Thanks for the response

I have discarded boards and finally I think that I could use ESP32-POE-ISO or  ESP32-C6-EVB. I think that it could be better for me use (and in this case) EVB because its have 4 relays and if I need more, I could adds Mod-IO. I would like control all, lights and the switches now and more in the future...

So, I have 2 questions:

• Can I give power to Mod-IO from EVB board directly if I have a power supply of 12v or 24v conected to EVB? It is for to know if I can simplify the power supply for both boards with one unit power
• Can I add an ethernet module easy to EVB? I see that there is modules like this https://www.olimex.com/Products/Modules/Ethernet/MOD-ENC28J60/

Thanks in advanced!
Best regards.

[LubOlimex]

The relays of either MOD-IO and MOD-IO2 won't work if you power them from the UEXT. These are 5V relays and the UEXT can provide around 3.3V. So if you need the extra relays you'd have to split the power between the ESP32 board and the MOD-IO/MOD-IO2 power. Maybe consider these:

https://www.olimex.com/Products/Components/Cables/PWR-CABLE/
https://www.olimex.com/Products/Components/Cables/PWR-CABLE-HC-0-5M/

MOD-ENC28J60 should work but will require some software effort. If you have problems with throughput or configuration consider searching for an Ethernet module with a chip that is supported by espressif, like IP101, RTL8201, LAN87xx, DP83848, KSZ80xx. From the ESP32-C6 page:

https://docs.espressif.com/projects/esp-idf/en/stable/esp32c6/api-reference/network/esp_eth.html

Overall adding LAN is trickier than adding relays. My advice is to get a board with LAN and Ethernet connector and then add relays.