> generic RS-485

You can already hook up an RS-485 transceiver to the UART ports and use it today with the UART driver. Esphome also has a Modbus controller component. What are you referring to by “generic” RS-485 that isn’t available already?

RS-485 is a shared bus, so you need to use some kind of a protocol to arbitrate access, and to make sure you don't flash unintended devices.

BACnet is one example, but other protocols can work too.

It doesn't allow firmware updates over modbus. The same would also apply to Zigbee.

Yes the modules with rpi2040 and Ethernet would be so great to have supported.

I'm pretty unhappy with the WiFi 8266 modules I have. They regularly go into unavailable in home assistant for a few minutes even though my WiFi is working fine

Could it be that they're simply idle sleeping to save power? My first ESPhome device confused me by dropping off and on and it turned out that was the problem, idle sleep was configured by default - the device would wake up, report its status and go back to sleep.

Hmm I don't know. It could be but it's very intermittent. Sometimes it happens a lot, sometimes it doesn't.

I'll try to find out the sleep settings though, thanks for the tip!