Running a VPN Gateway on an ESP32
The article discusses using an ESP32-S3 as a VPN gateway, highlighting its advantages over a Raspberry Pi Zero. It mentions the MicroLink project, which allows the ESP32 to function as a Tailscale client. While the setup process is more time-consuming, the ESP32 offers benefits like faster boot times and lower power consumption.
- ▪The ESP32-S3 can serve as a VPN gateway, comparable to a Raspberry Pi Zero.
- ▪It boots in two seconds and consumes only 0.5 Watts of power.
- ▪The setup process for the ESP32 as a Tailscale client takes several hours due to memory management requirements.
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| Original publisher | Hackaday |
| Canonical URL | https://hackaday.com/2026/05/18/running-a-vpn-gateway-on-an-esp32/ |
| Publication time | Mon, 18 May 2026 11:00:30 +0000 |
| Retrieval time | 2026-05-18T11:04:56.482Z |
| Last seen | 2026-05-18T11:04:56.482Z |
| Headline source | Publisher (no WeSearch rewrite) |
| Excerpt source | publisher body |
| Excerpt method | First ~120 words (~800 chars) of extracted publisher body, fair-use limited. |
| Summary | WeSearch · cerebras-chat (WeSearch summarizer) |
| Summary source text | contentText |
| Citation coverage | Summary is a WeSearch-generated derivative; primary citation is the original publisher URL. |
| Cluster | IiWA7t1tUD5x |
| Cluster logic | Grouped by semantic title/content similarity across sources within a rolling window. Same-publisher template collisions are excluded from coverage comparison. |
| Ranking reason | Story pages are not engagement-ranked. Hub feeds use recency, with optional source-diversified chronological ordering (cap consecutive stories per source). No personalized ranking. |
| Publisher visit | Yes — open original |
| Substitutes article? | No — link-out required for full text |
Rights status (four layers)
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| Indexing | May the item be indexed (stored, ranked, made findable)? | Allowed |
| Snippet | May a short excerpt of the publisher's text be shown? | Allowed |
| AI summary | May WeSearch generate its own short summary of the article? | Limited |
| Retrieval / RAG | May the content be exposed for third-party retrieval-augmented generation? | Not asserted |
| Model training | May the content be used to train AI models? | Not asserted |
| Commercial reuse | May the content be reused commercially? | Not permitted |
Basis: Derived from the published RSS/Atom feed. Contact: [email protected]. Reviewed: 2026-07-24.
Opening excerpt (first ~120 words) tap to expand
Running A VPN Gateway On An ESP32 No comments by: Aaron Beckendorf May 18, 2026 Title: Copy Short Link: Copy If you need a VPN gateway to access your home network, the fastest and most cost-effective way is probably by using a Raspberry Pi Zero. But in [Samir Makwana]’s view, an ESP32-S3 is just as capable for moderate use, and in some respects even superior. This was possible thanks to the MicroLink project, which is a full implementation of a Tailscale client for the ESP32 family. In some ways the ESP32 worked better than a Raspberry Pi: it boots in two seconds rather than thirty, draws 0.5 Watts rather than 1.5, and there’s no chance of it failing due to a corrupted SD card.
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Excerpt limited to ~120 words for fair-use compliance. The full article is at Hackaday.
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