I fired up Mud-Py, the Mud-Py MQTT bridge, and the MQTT server this evening, and turned on an ESP32S programmed with the flora MQTT client software.

Flora talks to the Xiaomi  sensors, and reports the values to the MQTT server.  From there, the bridge dumps it into the database, creating sensor objects and other things as needed.

Here's the "Sensor data" page with some of the collected values:

The list isn't very useful as a working tool, but it does show that the bridge is correctly reading the data and putting it in the database.  That's adequate for the beginning.  It can collect data while I work on the analysis parts of the software.

I'm going to write my own ESP32S software for the control nodes.  The flora software works, but it doesn't do the things I need it to do.

I'm going to assemble the power banks for the ESP32S modules this weekend, then start in on the ESP32 software.