Will running extra sensors on the same board affect Espectre's performance?

[gasment]

I added an illumination and a temperature+humidity sensor on the same board，can't see obvious impact to espectre,
i tested it with s3， is it the same to the c3/c6 which has weaker performance ?

i2c:
  sda: GPIO2
  scl: GPIO3
  scan: true         
  id: bus_a
sensor:
  - platform: bh1750
    name: "Illumination"
    unit_of_measurement: "lx"
    address: 0x23
    update_interval: 2s
    i2c_id: bus_a
    filters:
      - lambda: |-
          return round(x);
      - filter_out: nan
      - delta: 2
  - platform: sht3xd
    temperature:
      name: "Temperature"
      unit_of_measurement: "°C"
      filters:
        - delta: 0.1
        - lambda: |-
            return round(x * 10.0) / 10.0;   
    humidity:
      name: "Humidity"
      unit_of_measurement: "%"
      filters:
        - delta: 0.1
        - lambda: |-
            return round(x * 10.0) / 10.0;   
    address: 0x44
    i2c_id: bus_a
    update_interval: 10s

logs:logs.txt

[francescopace]

Great to hear it works well on S3! Yes, it should work fine on C3/C6 too. I2C sensors run in the main loop and don't interfere with CSI processing (which runs on a separate task).

For C3/C6 (single-core), I'd suggest slightly longer update intervals (5s+ for BH1750, 30s for SHT3x) to minimize any overhead, but even your current settings should be fine.

Note: The calibration fallback in your log is due to weak WiFi signal (-78 dB), not the sensors.

[eigenphase]

Hi @francescopace this is such an amazing project!

May I follow up on this question? In general I hate running too many devices and try my best to consolidate as much as possible. I already have 11 ESPhome devices and try to run as much as possible on each device. Especially BLE Proxy would be amazing to also in parallel.

I have the following devices. Could you comment which one you think it would interfere too much?

1. Air Quality Monitor (sen6x platform) via I2C
2. BLE Proxy
3. OpenGarage and Gasmeter via I2C/HMC5833L (ESP8266 device so probably not an option anyway)
4. Heat Pump (Midea XYE via RS485) and Heat Pump Water Heater (Econet via RS485 and BLE Proxy)
5. Muse Luxe media player + sen6x + BLE Proxy
6. 2x Emporia Vue + BLE Proxy
7. Emporia Vue Utility Connect + BLE Proxy
8. Watermeter, QMC5883L via I2C + BLE Proxy

All of my devices are still normal ESP32/ESP32-C3. I2C you mentioned already should be OK. How about GPIO (such as RS485)? How about BLE Proxy? How about media player (Muse Luxe)?

[francescopace]

Hi @eigenphase, based on both the project design and community feedback, BLE is not something I’d consider a general blocker for ESPectre.

ESPectre already uses BLE in practice for its optional telemetry/control channel (for example, the web game uses Web Bluetooth), and that has not shown particular issues in normal use. I also know of users running bluetooth_proxy alongside ESPectre successfully, so that combination looks reasonable in practice.

In general:

• I2C sensors: generally fine
• GPIO / UART / RS485: generally fine too, unless they do blocking work or very aggressive polling
• BLE / BLE Proxy: generally fine as well
• media_player / Muse Luxe: I haven’t tested that combination myself, so I can’t say with confidence how it behaves. It might cause more trouble simply because it is a heavier and burstier workload.

One more practical recommendation for larger deployments: if you have many ESPectre devices around the house, I’d suggest disabling the internal traffic generator on each node and using a single external traffic generator instead, for example on the same Home Assistant server.

ESPectre supports this directly with traffic_generator_rate: 0, which opens a UDP listener on port 5555, and the docs include a ready-to-use external generator script plus a Home Assistant command_line integration example: External Traffic Mode

That way you reduce per-device overhead and also cut total WiFi airtime significantly in multi-device setups.

Let me know if you test ESPectre with media_player on the same device!

[eigenphase]

Thank you for taking time to answer! That's great news! BLE Proxy is actually the most important one, followed by I2C, GPIO, RS485, UART.

For now I'm holding back on the MuseLuxe because I actually overloaded it quite a bit already: It has basic ML (wake word) for Voice Assistant, streaming media player and then I added an I2C device (air quality sensors), BLE proxy and T3/T4 detector. Seems the image is getting too big.

I have played around with an M5 Atom but sadly didn't get it working reliably yet. I think one issue is that I have two ceiling mount APs (multi-SSD+VLANs: EAP610), one on the upper floor one on the lower.

The (detected) threshold is always crazy low, movement score random and movement sensor just changes every couple of seconds.

[francescopace]

Thanks @eigenphase, this sounds more like a device/environment-specific stability issue than a general compatibility question.

Could you please open a GitHub issue with your board model, ESPHome config, logs, WiFi setup (APs/SSID/band), and any reproduction steps? That will make it much easier to track and investigate properly.