add remote sensors

[justme-1968]

Problem
there are scenarios where sensor values from locations are of interest that don't lend themselves to a dedicated aura.

i had written this initially as a comment on #104 (comment), but this might be worth its own enhancement suggestion.

Proposed solution
it would be nice to extend and generalise this with detached sensors. that means dedicated devices with an esp and a subset of the supported sensors but without a display. an aura base station with a display could then be paired with one or more detached sensors and include their values in the local display. this would solve your scenario and also others like placing sensors in a basement or attic where no-one would see the display.

[21cncstudio]

Aura isn't really the best fit for this — in some ways it's already close to its limits. This kind of functionality is something I'm planning for future projects.

The idea is to build a full ecosystem with a central hub and multiple satellite devices, where you can pick and choose what you need, with compatibility with other manufacturers as well.

[garciamoranc]

I am very curious about this since that's something we are working on internally, I have various ESP32 C6 sensors deployed and I push their data to the cloud but wanted see if I could make a "local data receiver" that would display the sensor data from others, I looked at Aura since you already have a lot of time invested into the operations and GUI and it could then be extended to include daughter data points

One of requirements is to have it be Zigbee, since I'm looking at commercial deployments where I could avoid the Clients WIFI if needed, but can also look at other ways of doing it

[21cncstudio]

At the moment Aura is designed as a standalone air quality monitor, not as a general local receiver/gateway for other sensor nodes. The firmware, UI, history, graphs, MQTT, and Home Assistant integration are all built around the sensors connected directly to the Aura device.

Zigbee is not currently supported, and adding Aura-as-a-Zigbee-gateway would be a pretty large separate project. It would require new radio hardware/support, pairing/device management, a data model for external sensors, UI changes for remote data points, storage changes, and probably a different architecture for commercial deployments.

For the current Aura roadmap, I’m trying to keep the device focused and reliable as an air quality monitor.

[garciamoranc]

Agreed :) I dont want to deviate you from Aura being the best of what I can be, I will be experimenting once I get the pieces and see what the future brings thats why I became a commercial backer for you!

[21cncstudio]

Thanks, I really appreciate that support!