Daisy-chaining multiple Olimex ESP32-Gateways

[LeFIsh]

Hi there,

I need to daisy-chain multiple ESP32-Gateways with Ethernet cables.

https://www.olimex.com/Products/IoT/ESP32/ESP32-GATEWAY/open-source-hardware

My physical build situation makes any star-like LAN-configuration very unattractive due to long cables running back and forth...

Any of the ESP32-Gateways will receive a static IP-Address.

Ideally the esp32-gateway would have two bridged/switched LAN-Ports. But unfortunately this is not the case.

What would be the best ways to daisy-chain multiple ESP32-Gateways?

Thank you for your help!

Best regards
LeFish

[LubOlimex]

A lot of options for daisy chaining excluding the Ethernet - WIFI, I2C, UART, GPIOs. Probably using WIFI is easiest since it reduces cables.

[LeFIsh]

Hello LubOlimex,

I understand, but WiFi is not an option in my case as I need rock-solid (therefore cable-bound) communication between the gateways.

Can you think of any of your ETH-Modules being capable of providing a second, bridged ETH-interface to the ESP32?

Has anyone tried this on arduino-espressif-platform yet?
ESP-IDF seems to be capable of using multiple ETH-ports: https://github.com/espressif/esp-idf/issues/7318

Another option would be to implement an unmanaged switched port on the PCB the gateway is implemented on. I dont't need much speed 100mbitps is perfectly fine. Even going down to stable 10mbitps would be possible.

I must admit I do not understand much about Ethernet (yet). Does anyone know of a DIY-project implementeing an unmanaged 100M/10M 2-port switch. There could be even single chip solutions?!

I have to dig deeper, buth this is something very interesting: https://hackaday.com/2020/04/21/new-part-day-an-open-source-ethernet-switch-in-the-palm-of-your-hand/

Maybe this could be of interest to other people using the Olimex ESP32-gateways in semi-industrial environments?!

Thanks for your suggestions

[LeFIsh]

Ok, I have found a very interesting single chip solution: IP175G

I will investigate further...

[LeFIsh]

@LubOlimex:

Ever though of bringing out some simple Ethernet-switch-Module like this:

https://www.bcscctv.pl/en/bcs-xpoe3-ext-pp.html


I am sure there are plenty of people interested in this from Olimex too!

Best regards
LeFish

[LubOlimex]

We also have some UEXT extension modules capable of Ethernet but I am not sure how great the software effort would be, for example this 10MBIT one:

https://www.olimex.com/Products/Modules/Ethernet/MOD-ENC28J60/

It uses SPI.

Since ESP32 is very popular there is good chance someone already did something for ESP32 and ENC28J60, just google it, first result seems to be this project:

https://github.com/tobozo/ESP32-ENC28J60