A bunch of great questions and concerns! I’ll keep these all in mind when I write an FAQ.
> I checked @flaviu’s docs and looks good, I’m still a little scared of somehow bricking it. I’m wondering, too, if you have a USB-to-serial dongle that controls RTS and DTR if you can have it control IO0 the usual way rather than having to manually ground it.
I’ve never had a serial adaptor with RTS & DTR, but it looks like you can make it work! Connect EN & RTS, IO0 & DTR and you should be good to go.
> The only thing that makes me a little asd is I’d like to have both … give me a nice clean ESPHOME interface (preferably via MQTT) but also still feed Emporia Cloud, since I do find that handy at times.
MQTT support will likely happen in the near future (<6 mo).
Unfortunately, it is unlikely to ever be possible to use Emporia Cloud & ESPHome/Home Assistant simultaneously. It is technically possible, but would require reverse engineering the MQTT connection to AWS that Emporia Cloud uses, and would also likely make Emporia unhappy.
> can one replace the esp32 module and write the new code to the new module, i will like to keep the original module intact
I have quite advanced soldering skills, and I’d say this is too risky, even with my skills.
> I might just read and make a backup of it and then replace the module and install the new code.
Yup, you should absolutely do this. The instructions provide prominent guidance on how to do it, and are very insistent that you should not skip this step.
> can we read the module if it has been updated?
Should be no problem.
