Dealing with limited GPIOs on ESP8266 vs upgrading to ESP32 for IoT security?

[maker_o9scok4l_1743564570]

Hello guys,

I'm working on upgrading an old home automation hub. The original design used an ESP8266, but I'm running into two major bottlenecks now:

1. GPIO Limitation: I need to connect an SPI display, two I2C sensors, and a couple of relays. I’m almost entirely out of usable pins on the ESP8266 without messing up the boot strapping pins (GPIO0/2/15).
2. Security: I want to implement secure TLS/HTTPS requests to my server. The ESP8266 seems to struggle heavily with SSL handshake times and memory overhead.

I was reading through this esp32 vs esp8266 guide regarding hardware-based encryption and security engines. It seems the ESP32 handles cryptographic acceleration in hardware, which would solve my bottleneck, not to mention having way more GPIOs.

However, given the price difference and complexity (dual-core RTOS versus bare-metal loop), I'm wondering:

• Is using an I2C port expander (like PCF8574) on the ESP8266 still a viable workaround to save cost, or is it better to just jump to ESP32 directly?
• How much faster is the SSL handshake on an ESP32 compared to ESP8266 in your actual testing?

Would love to hear your experiences before I start redesigning the PCB.

Best regards!

 

[danadak]

If you have multiple pins assigned to buttons one ADC pin can handle multiple
buttons :

A genius way of handling multiple buttons — Curious Scientist

In this article, I show you a genius way of handling multiple buttons with a microcontroller. I “discovered” this method when I got my Hawkeye Firefly Split V6 PRO camera and used its remote controller. The remote controller has 5 buttons, but there are only two cables coming from it. This made me

curiousscientist.tech

The I2C devices all have different addresses ? Google "I2C pin sharing pdf", lots of help.

Take a look at this : https://chatgpt.com/s/t_6a5a06b732248191b46df15bb8cd4e1c