Packet Transport Text Sensor

[MagMeister]

Describe the component you'd like

Create the Packet Transport Text Sensor component.

As an addition to the existing components Packet Transport Sensor and Packet Transport Binary Sensor.

What are your use cases for this component?

Enables Text Sensor data to be exchanged between ESP devices, using different packet transport platforms, like UDP and ESP-NOW.

Is there a public datasheet, documentation and/or schematics?

No response

Anything else?

No response

[clydebarrow]

It's not hard to do, but there would be a variable but smallish limit on the size of the text as some transports have limited packet size.

[MagMeister]

I agree, the biggest challenge is the data chunking. From this issue, my understanding is that the Packet Transport Component already has some data chunking mechanisms. But I did not look at the code, so I'm not sure.

Before submitting this feature request, I did some tests with the ESP-NOW and the UDP component to send text.

Transmitter

text_sensor:
  - platform: template
    name: "My text sensor"
    id: my_text_sensor
    on_value:
      then:
        - espnow.broadcast:
            data: !lambda |-
              std::string output = x.substr(0, 250);
              return std::vector<unsigned char>(output.begin(), output.end());
		- udp.write:
            data: !lambda return std::vector<unsigned char>(x.begin(), x.end());

Receiver

espnow:
  on_broadcast:
    then:
      - text_sensor.template.publish:
            id: my_text_sensor
            state: !lambda return std::string(data, data + size);

udp:
  on_receive:
    then:
      - lambda: |-
          std::string output = std::string(data.begin(), data.end());
          id(my_text_sensor).publish_state(output);

My text sensor is about 1500 bytes.
To be able to receive something with the ESP-NOW component, I needed to limit the packet size to 250 bytes, since this is the limit of the ESP-NOW v1 protocol. If the packet size exceeds the 250 bytes, nothing will be sent.
With the UDP component, I'm able to receive a first part, around 880 bytes.

[clydebarrow]

There is no packet fragmentation done in packet_transport. There is a new component (packet_interface) under development that will be able to do that, in time, along with guaranteed delivery. Not there yet, but it is coming.