Forget WiFi! This Wireless Method is WAY Better? 

For those who don't know, Any ESP can be switched to external antenna with small soldering skills You can use espnow or espnow long range. Espnow can be used simultaneously with wifi if you need a Gateway but not recommended

As others have said: the esp32 can function in AP wireless mode, so you can connect to it without a router involved. Additionally many (most? all?) can function in STA and AP mode simultaneously, so they can connect to a wifi net at the same time something is connecting to them. I do this and it works great.

ESP-NOW really shines when it comes to low power designs, since it is connectionless. I converted a sensor over from wifi to espnow and it went from draining an 18650 in under a month to lasting over 6 months at which point I just ended the test. It should be noted that ESP-NOW does have a built in retry mechanism when used in unicast mode (which is when you tell it the destination MAC, i.e. not FF-FF-FF-FF-FF-FF). It will retry 11 total times at 11, 5, then 1Mbit, or even slower if "long range" is activated. This is important when you're going for a low latency connection like voice, that the total send time can be 0.1ms or 3-4ms for one packet!

I'd like to give you a big thanks. Years ago I didn't even own a soldering iron. Thanks to your videos and inspiration-- I've tackled the basics all the way through to building my own ESC for an electric quad bike! Your videos are more than entertainment and/or tutorials-- they inspire and change peoples lives! Thank you Great Scott :). Thank you!

Approx. 2 years ago, you was one of the RU-vidrs that motivated me to start tinkering with electonics myself. Meanwhile I finished a few successful projects. For example, I have built my own telemetry system for my RC helicopters using ESP-NOW communication. I also built a „customer detector“ with 2x ESP8266, a sonic distance measuring module, a few LEDs and ESP-NOW communication. Great videos, GreatScott!

ESP-NOW is nice to play with, but it does have some quirks you need to know or else you will loose a lot of time debugging it. For example, you better not use the full 250 byte payload length as this tends to work less reliable. Better stay below 200-ish bytes per packet. Also it seems like ESP-NOW does do some acknowledgements as the round-trip time increases when you extend the range. Like it does seem to lower the bandwidth and thus increase the possible range. You need to set the MAC address as peer for sending to some other node, but not for receiving. So you can make it more dynamically with some coding effort. The maximum number of peers you can set depends on whether or not you use encryption. And from experience, the broadcast feature tends to work even more unpredictable when adding more peers. So do not rely on broadcast packets. Also there is some really odd stuff going on with the ESP radios when using any channel other than channel 1. So best to stay on channel 1 unless you have a very good reason to use another channel (e.g. when STA is connected to some other AP to try and use as a gateway) You also need to set the channel when adding a peer, as the ESP-NOW code will remember the channel for a specific peer and if for some reason it assumed the peer was on another channel, you will see really poor performance as the radio needs to switch channels constantly. You need to have a stable power supply when using an ESP-NOW node via its AP interface as this is constantly on. This is the fastest and most reliable mode for nodes that can be always powered as you will less likely miss a packet. You can send packets via the STA interface, but only use this for nodes that really need to save the last bit of energy like some wake-up, fire and go to sleep again. In all other situations, use AP interface for ESP-NOW traffic. This also allows to properly set the channel. If you keep all of these in mind, then ESP-NOW can be a really fun protocol to experiment with and the distance can get surprisingly long between nodes. It also is quite fast as you mentioned. Like a few msec round-trip-time is to be expected when using the AP interface.

I love the WW1 sound of the esp transmission.

Almost 3 years ago i have created a complete system based on ESP Now as a part of my FYP. It includes ESP now gateway, multiple sensors and actuator nodes, complete custom backend and mobile app for controlling everything. I made some modification to esp now based systems to increase it reliability as esp now is based on udp. Also everything is dynamic thanks to the esp now gateway i have designed. ESP now is very great low power protocol only if we use it properly.

ESPnow is super cool, and there is also a long range mode. That in combination with the wifi on the lowest bitrate and some external antennes(but just simple 2dbi ones) i got 2,5km of bi directional communication. But i have to say it was mounted on a rc plane

Very cool. There's so much happening in the microcontroller and wireless worlds these it's impossible to keep up, so I'm glad to see this. WiFi without a router - Thank You ESP!

When I was in college (circa 1985), I built a one-way digital audio link (in this case using an LED and a photodiode) that employed a delta modulator (Analog Devices chip ?). The key benefit of the delta modulator is that the bit rate is low as data is only sent when the audio waveform is changing. I was quite impressed by the fidelity I achieved well below the Nyquist theorem.

I have found out that if you use the ESP-32 Dev Modules that has external antenna connector you can greatly improve the range.

best feature for espnow is "transfering data quickly" from my experience. And i did not know the lora module is in the low speed category as you showed in the video, thanks for it. Comments are very informative! Thank you all, maker community!

THANK YOU! This video is exactly what I have been trying to research for my project. Alternatives to all the other wireless standards. I use ESPs from adafruit and never knew about ESP-Now. Your channel has informed me about soooo much! Thank you!

I recently used ESP8266 with wifi for a project to switch alot of relais and with multiple esp‘s. Yes you need a gateway and a server but the communication was super fast and also secure with certificates.

Very lovely insight. Thank you for the upload!!!!!!❤

Great video (as always) I love ESP-NOW as i dont like having my stuff connected to the internet for obvious reasons and you are only scratching the surface of what ESP-NOW can do, looking forward to the projects you have lined up for it

I'd never heard of this protocol. Thanks!

Good video. But your comparison may generate some confusion. 433Mhz it's a frequency but Lora it's a modulation protocol. 433Mzh have been used for quite long time before Lora but here in EU Lora transmissions use same frequency plus 868Mhz. Living in Germany you must know that this country have a strong Meshcom community. For those who don't know Meshcom it's a Meshstatic like project that use only 433Mhz frequency.

I made a little 150g combat robot using an ESP32-C3-MINI-1, and, can confirm, ESP-NOW is indeed awesome. I put the robot in my house, then walked outside, past my gate, and it still worked (probably 30m or so). Past that it stopped receiving signals though, probably because my transmitter ESP32 was very small and had a chip antenna which was probably low gain (not to mention the antenna had no ground clearance or anything. Thanks for your awesome videos GreatScott!

Brilliant, dude! Fantastic project!!! 😃 Stay safe there with your family! 🖖😊

Its astounding how capable esp32 is...theres so much just built in! Coming from arduino nano to esp32 is a lot of fun :)

Video of Zigbee network using a full set of ESP32 C6/H2 as a Coordinator,Router,End Device mode and as a HA bridge would be Super 👌

I am DEFINITELY going to look into ESP-NOW as a (potential) replacement for RF24 modules. The RF24 modules are great so far, but could do with getting rid of the extra wiring.

Just a side note that if you have multiple ESP32 boards communicating with each other via ESP-NOW especially for fast data transfer applications (like RC Car), there might be noticeable lags in the data transfer (but no data loss I think) until you leave only one ESP32 pair communicating. This is, from what I have experienced, due to too much activity in the ESP-NOW channel you set for each ESP32 pair. There are a few lines of code mentioned in the Espressif docs that allow you to change the channel, just like WiFi, but it was not obvious (at least for me) :(

Thanks. It's something new for me, and it's interesting.

Thank you sir, this seems super interesting to me! 😊😊

You also need filtering to filter anything above the Nyquist frequency: otherwise you get aliasing.

I didn’t know about espnow or espnow long range! Cool video…. Thanks so much!

Love your videos Great Scott! Thank you for creating. I’ve learned a lot from watching your channel.

I am surprised that ELEKTOR is still alive. I started this magazine in the 70s and made many projects over a period of 15 years. Later, I purchased only the double issue in August.

I put together a zigbee network for my old workplace. Super low power, totally open protocol with encryption and mesh networking by default, works with a ton of off-the-shelf stuff (like IKEA lights and buttons), no single point of failure except for setting up the initial connection. Industry routinely tries to kill it off beacuse it's really not that profitable and makes external data collection more difficult, but for users, it's really an ideal protocol.

ESPnow reminds me of the ELRS (ExpressLRS) protocol for hobby rc controllers. Very efficient, long range, and also 2.4ghz.

thanks bro! awesome project

I love your videos, they are soooo informative, easy to follow, and just overall great quality

3:14 That isn't true, you can make a private network between modules without a router and when you do this with websockets it blazingly fast. Range can also be pretty good.

Great video as usual. Can you consider making a followup with a version of ESP32 with external antenna connection ?

GreatScott you inspired me a lot, thank you!

Excellent Video! Thank you!

i was just recently thinking about how how 20 years ago about how cheap but capable micro controllers changed so much. Now everything needs to also be wireless and have an app. Sure, I think it's overused sometimes but its also useful as well

esp now works really well I use it a lot. Where it gets tricky is with wifi / bluetooth at the same time.

I would love to see total cost for a project go on that awesome comparison table you had there ❤

And one suggestion for next esp project is esp wireless surveillance camera with auto motion capture, sending the footage to it's IP address and maybe on google drive or local storage if it's possible somehow. You can use SD card module for storing footage but it's got a lot of limitations you know. And to power all of that, utilizing a solar cell would be fascinating idea. That could be a great project IMO. Hope you'd think about it. Thank you so much BTW for your hard work and teaching us so much that no one could. #Respect

Thanks for this inspiring video :)

Thanks for the video. I’m currently working on a project that involves energy consumption from the chillers I just want my devices to sense whether I’m using generator/Grid, since the feed change over is 20m away from the chillers. Hopefully ESP32 Now gonna solve my problem

Great Scott, Thank for video.... 😊

I don't have a wifi range problem myself. I can transceive approximately one mile without a bridge. Granted it is a commercial building to building system but I see your point. 😅

Awesome, thank you 🙏

For the Bluetooth you also can use a Long range mode which increase distance significantly.

Great video as usual. Have you ever measured the latency between the input and output of those different systems? I am curious if the ESP-now is better in terms of latency.

3:00 WiFi is a bit slower but not that much, the response time is pretty much instantaneous, notice that the request isn't being sent as soon as you release the button (look at the reload wheel on the top right)

Großartig. 👏🏽

I've been wanting to use ESP-now from the start in one of my IoT projects, but haven't gotten around to it yet. While all my IoT boards come with GSM capabilities, WiFi is the more popular choice. However, when WiFi isn't available, using multiple IoT + GSM connections in one location gets expensive. So, I'm thinking of using one IoT device as an ESP-now internet gateway for the others. Time to put this idea to the test!

Thinking of using it for every robotics controller now onwards

I know there are many DIY guides and 3D printed projects - but I would really love to see a open source (or at least hackable and reflashable) ESP32 based walkie-talkie in a 'real' rugged case.

This would be good for robotics, less wires and energy loss! I'm interested in what you're going to create!

Now ESPNow is obviously awesome for embedded devices. But with the problem description I immediately thought of ad-hoc-wifi/wifi-direct, which use the normal band and lack the gateway requirement of infrastructure mode. But I get that the point was to show off the new protocol.

one of the best things about ESP Now is its really low latency. It does not guarantee delivery, like udp, but to send then receive a packet takes under 1 ms . I have measured this myself.

I’ve been waiting for this video for so long 🎉

WiFi interference of ESP32 is a big problem. I faced it for the first time when I was designing a super stable and noise-free power supply for some specific project of our lab. The power supply output voltage was being controlled by the ESP. The WiFi interference was adding noise to the output voltage. Later we switched to STM32.

The NRF24L01 works almost the same as ESP-NOW in BLE mode, which is what you used in this project. ESP32 BLE and NRF24L01 can communicate with each other. NRF24L01 was already in use before the BLE standard was certified in 2009, and products that used the BLE standard came much later. I still love the NRF24 series, it's cheap and easy to use.

Love the content, hate the soldering, that thing gave me nightmares...

I've got a dozen ESP32's around the house as various temperature/weather/climate sensors. But they all connect to wifi and then talk to a Raspberry Pi server to upload their data. I guess if I wanted to use this, I'd need another ESP32 acting as a host/gateway? And all the other ESP32's would send their data to it over ESP-NOW, and then the gateway would upload to the Raspberry Pi.

Really cool!

Sounds like it's better for control data than sending audio. Have you checked out MIDI over Bluetooth?

Very interesting! I want to control a Teensy Laser Synth, remotely via MIDI. So, bandwidth is minimalized. Seems like a perfect solution, if transparent to the user. Great Scott! You've just added another year to my to-do list. Thanks! 😎

I agree ESPnow is a good protocol for ESP-ESP communications but, unfortunately, most of the projects I do, I use the RF connection for connection to a PC or phone for UI or data collection.

I can see your custom made designs do not have the esp32 in the corner so i thought you might not be aware of that using a properly placed footprint, following the espressif antenna placement recommendations for active esp32 modules (tldr: put the antena in a corner without pcb behind) will give you MUCH LONGER range. The devkits you are using as examples in this video have pcb (probably with ground) routed under the antenna and they have terrible wireless performance, you can easily get >15m for wifi out of a good design. You can also see the change in antenna placement in newer espressif devkits like the S3 ones, they all have the antenna outside the pcb. it can even work quite well from inside a closed metal enclosure. Thnx for the video, i didn't know about ESP-NOW, i will be using it from now on!

Hey, du kannst in der Shelly App übrigens auch einstellen, dass der Akteur ein Rollo ist - dann kannst du da auch hoch/runter und Prozentangaben machen.

I discovered ESP NOW a month ago. I was very excited about it, since I want to build a home automation system and this protocol looks ideal for the project. I saw a lot of videos about the range, it is much better than the standard wifi protocol. I built a little test circuit to check this range. Only two ESP32-s, one is switching the state of a bool twice in a second and transmitting the value, the other is receiving and write it to a little oled screen. I barely left my apartment, just closed the door and the signal was already lost. I thought, maybe the walls are too thick, so I put the transmitter to my balcony, and I went to the street in front of the house. Approx 12 meters only (4 story house), I saw the transmitter with my eyes, so no blocking at all, but I didn't get the value. Not impressed. However, it is pretty fast and responsible, so it will be the right choice to my project.

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Did you try out the long range mode too? In my experience that makes a huge difference, the only downside is a smaller bandwidth

I think the only downside is that you need 2 devices then to communicate? for example my Esp32 wifi garage opener i can control with my phone and out of wifi also with port forwarding in my router

if you did a range test on voice transmiting it would be perfect!and how about transmiting video with a esp32 cam?great job by the way

We covered esp now in the german make magazin in issue 3/22 😊

Thanks for the video, I would like to know if this board could be used for a wireless controller or diy wireless sim racing wheel.

ESP-now is practical to expand IOs with wemos D1s.

I guess you know about it or at least have heard of it that you can use esp32 as a wifi repeater. That project would be great to test and push esp32 to it's limits

Nice video, mesh networking algorithm implementation could be tested for the same form factor and specs.

I am interested to know the problems you have with LoRA seeing as its capable of around 27kbps that should be more than enough for basic audio communication and significantly longer range.

and he did it again he connected the voice source without directly without any filters.

I've been thinking of creating a usbip connector for the dualsense ps5 controller, since most of it's features only work via usb on pc, and seems like esp32 could be a good use for it, specially with this protocol

You’ve got me curious about how far the walkie talkie works when you add ESP32s along the path. Is it distance times the number of ESPs? Does signal drop off after a certain amount? What if there are multiple ESPs at each “leg of the relay”?

How does this differ from zigbee? I wish the zigbee protocol would be more accessible to the hobbyist user with a soldering iron. :)

It’s like you redid 1930’s radio tech but with Wi-Fi and other frequencies, wicked cool

I use those cheap $2 rf modules, and I get upto 2km if in sight, did you check the power setting? Orientation should be upright, and the antenna maybe needs length tuning.

Hi. Thanks for the video. Can you create a mesh with this?

What about Matter ? How does it performs ? Also embedded using IP and standardized across vendors ?

did you try using ESPNOW in WIFI-LR mode?, it increases range but makes it slower

hi great scott I recently brought a electronic kit and wanted to make a flip flop and do other things with the 555 timer so I was thinking if you could make a video on making flip flop and other fun circuits with 555 timer like potentially making a sine wave generator or any other waveforms with it

What would you use to reach the roof a few floors above in a concrete building? I want to add a remote controlled thermostat to my solar water heater.

The absolute easiest, longest range and dependable rf link is with the Digi Xbee modules. A little pricey, but very simple to use.

Try hc12 433. Eazy to use. Based on only 4 pins to module. Range to 1 km outside

what sort of range do you think you could achieve with an optimized antenna?

Hi Scott. Thanks for all these interesting videos ! I've got a question for you ... I've been looking for a Li-ion battery protection circuit (or 5v buck boost with low voltage protection) that cuts around 3.2~3.0V, and couldn't find one. They are all set to cut at 2.5V, which IMMO is way too low and harms batteries, reducing their life time. For example, my E-cig has such a protection that cuts at 3.2V, but no way to find such circuit on Ali... any thoughts / advise about this ? Thanks

For audio and video have you tried esp-eye? Maybe with some integration to hass or frigate?

How can we protect our electronics against emp's/ coronal mass ejections?

You really need to get a proper antenna on those 344 MHz modules, just a 21 cm length of wire will perform much better then that tiny coil. You can also get modules like the RFM69HCW line (6 € from mouser) which have a much better superheterodyne receiver.

Ask which dashboard do you use for the blind control scene, i.e. which overlay on your cell phone that looks great (Homeassistant dashboard?)

7:01 That's quite the "out of range". 🤣