Extra: UART to WiFi bridge for two Raspberry Pis

Written by Chris Gregg

This tutorial describes how to set up two Raspberry Pi devices to communicate wirelessly using two ESP32 devices. The Raspberry Pis will communicate over UART, and the ESP32s will provide a wireless bridge between them. Although not particularly fast, the Raspberry Pis will act as if they are directly connected via their UART pins. E.g., calling uart_putchar('a') from one device can be received on the other device with a corresponding uart_getchar().

Use the following steps to setup the Arduino development environment:

  1. Get two ESP-32 devices. This library works for the following Hiletgo devices from Amazon.com (2x for $21.98):ESP32 on Amazon.com

  2. Download our esp32.zip file and unzip.

  3. Download and install the Arduino IDE for your computer: Arduino Download link

    On a Mac, copy the IDE program to your /Applications folder, and then run it once to install. Then quit the application.

  4. Copy the following libraries from the zip folder's libraries folder into your Arduino libraries folder (for a Mac, the default location is ~/Documents/Arduino/libraries/):

    ESP8266-Websocket-master

    QueueList

  5. Open up the Arduino application again. Follow the instructions at the following website to install the ESP32 library (under "Testing the Installation", choose the Node32s board): Install ESP32 on Arduino

  6. In the Arduino application, open the Websocket_server.ino program from the zip folder. In the program, change the ssid variable near the top of the program to be your team name (or another unique WiFi name). You may also change the password for better security.

  7. Connect one of the ESP32s to the computer using a micro-USB cable. If you have the USB-serial device connected for your Raspberry Pi, disconnect it first. In the Arduino IDE, select Tools->Port->SLAB_USBtoUART (or similar).

  8. Click the Upload button in the Websocket_server | Arduino window (it is a right-facing arrow). After the "compiling sketch…" message disappears, you should see an "Uploading…" message. If the sketch doesn't automatically upload to the device, you can hold down the button labeled "001" on the ESP32 to force it to listen for the upload (release once it starts uploading).

  9. To check to see if the upload worked, open Tools->Serial Monitor, select 115200 baud, and then click the EN button on the ESP32. You should see a message that says, "Setting AP (Access Point)_AP IP address: 192.168.4.1". You should also be able to find the ssid listed on your phone or computer as a WiFi network to join.

  10. Repeat steps 7-9 for your second ESP32, but load the Websocket_client program and install it, instead.

  11. To test the second ESP32, re-connect your first ESP32. The second ESP32 should find the new WiFi network and automatically connect to the second ESP32, and the blue LED on both devices should turn on to indicate that they are ready to transmit over UART.

For further testing, you can connect two USB-serial connectors to the ESP32s on pins 4 and 5 (labeled P4 and P5 on the ESP32 devices), and you can run the screen program on both in separate windows. Keep in mind that you will have multiple /dev/tty.SLAB_USBtoUART devices and will need to choose between them. E.g.,

screen /dev/tty.SLAB_USBtoUART12 115200
screen /dev/tty.SLAB_USBtoUART 115200

When testing, you should be able to type text into one of the screen windows and see it appear in the other screen window.