As first day owner of several Philips Living Colors / Hue products, I am very sad not to have such Zigbee like protocol in the world of Arduino and ESP. As regular task I am researching for the latest possibilites to run a mesh network using Arduino and/or Espressif’s ESP8266.
Actually there are these chances:
ESP8266WifiMesh
https://github.com/esp8266/Arduino/tree/master/libraries/ESP8266WiFiMesh
- already included in ESP8266 Arduino
- performs without encryption
- As I added encryption it stopped working properly / packet drops due timings
- Maybe useful as “auto-discovery” service
Meshish
https://github.com/olab-io/meshish
- Nice try, but to be honest: forget about it
ESP-Mesh
https://espressif.com/en/products/software/esp-mesh/resources
https://github.com/espressif/ESP8266_MESH_DEMO
- Developed by Espressif
- ESP SDK, no Arduino (no problem for me)
- looks promising
Patience
As long there is no final solution, just stick to manual configuration and use a router as AP – better connectivity anyway.
Stay tuned.