5 ms·

> If your network hardware allows it, you should pin the device to the closest one. In Wi-Fi it's always the client's choice on where to connect to at the end

> If your network hardware allows it, you should pin the device to the closest one. In Wi-Fi it's always the client's choice on where to connect to at the end of the day and any hacks the APs try to do to steer clients are "suggestions" at best and "signal ruiners for everyone" at worst. You may be better off specifying which specific AP you want to connect to by specifying the BSSID argument in the WiFi.begin() call on the ESP32 side https://github.com/espressif/arduino-esp32/blob/master/libraries/WiFi/src/WiFiSTA.h#L132 https://github.com/espressif/arduino-esp32/blob/master/libra... Alternatively, if you REALLY want to force it, the sanest way is to use a uniquely named IoT SSID on each AP so there would be no other option for those clients to choose to latch on to (and you can leave the other SSIDs shared for normal clients). E.g. "IoT-1", "IoT-2", "IoT-3" on 3 separate APs. It may clutter up device screens more when you list available networks but it's just visual because, as far as airtime, they all beacon just as often if the names are the same or not anyways. > From what people and the internet tell me you should set the band width on the 2.4 Ghz network that your boards use to 20 Mhz, not 40, not 60, and definitely not automatic. This is spot on in that 20 MHz is the ideal channel width on 2.4, doubly so for just an ESP32. Some things to add are I'd say it should apply to any of your 2.4 GHz networks unless you live out the sticks and really want to race a few extra mbps out at the fringe of your AP coverage (and even then the wider channel width is probably going to make your SNR worse even in the sticks). Also, I don't believe the ESP32 supports 60 MHz in the 2.4 GHz space at all (it's certainly not an option in the Wi-Fi standard). I'll also tack on that the ESP32-C6 can be worth springing for if these kinds of thing are a particular concern as it support Wi-Fi 6, which has a few enhancements for connecting lots of IoT devices without so much noise.

Vurdentium 2y ago
Yes this is a skill issue. But Arduino ecosystem is full of superstition and bizarre hacks. It's cargo cult electronics. They will do anything to avoid reading documentation or writing robust code. Even the power saving recommendation here reeks of it. There is no effort to understand it. Someone on an Arduino forum recommends it, others start to echo it to try to appear like they know what they're talking about, it becomes lore in the Arduino world and you out yourself as a clueless newbie if you don't know to do esp_wifi_set_ps(WIFI_PS_NONE) without questioning anything because that's just the way it's done. It disables the radio in between AP beacons, so unless there's a bug in the implementation it should have no noticeable impact to a quiet WiFi station other than saving a lot of power.
- serviceberry 2y ago
  I used to say things like that, but come on: Arduino is targeted at hobbyists. More specifically, it's targeted at hobbyists who don't want to spend too much time learning hardware. If they did, they would be using a "bare" microcontroller better suited for their needs and costing one tenth the price. But they're not interested in microcontroller programming, they just want to get their art project done. It's the same thing that happened with computers. Billions of people use them, but most just want to access Facebook or use MS Word, not learn OS internals. It's a different world from where we used to be 30-40 years ago, and that's fine. We design simpler, more intuitive products for them. If a product meant for that group can't be used effectively by the target audience, I think the fault is with the designer, not with the user.
  - toast0 2y ago
    > If they did, they would be using a "bare" microcontroller better suited for their needs and costing one tenth the price. Where do you get something like an ESP that's one tenth the price? ESPs are cheap and you can run Arduino, ESP-IDF directly, or fringe environments (I had some ESP8266 running NodeMCU because Lua made more sense to me than Arduino).
    - serviceberry 2y ago
      You can run Arduino code on anything, since it's mostly just a bit of syntactic sugar around C. But I'm sure you know what I mean. My point is that people who are attracted to Arduino are, by and large, not the kind of people who want to geek out about the inner workings of the MCU, and there's nothing wrong with that.
      - analog31 2y ago
        There's always a few of us. ;-) I'm pretty familiar with the microprocessor architecture of the 8-bit era that I grew up in, and have done a fair amount of hardware hacking. As things have gotten more complex, I've let some things slide, such as the complexity of pipelined architectures. Arduino is not even syntactic sugar any more. All it retains of its origins, that I'm aware of, is the weird setup() and loop() schtick. And you have limited control over what happens before your code starts. But with most Arduino compatible boards, you have full access to the vendor supplied libraries, and can go as deep as you want. These days my preferred platform at work is Teensy 4, and at home, the wireless enabled boards. I think Paul Stoffgren is some kind of 100x engineer. But life is short. Over my 61 years, I've carefully rationed the brain cells that I devote to innards of technologies that will soon be obsolete. I read the Turbo Pascal manuals cover to cover, and The Art Of Electronics, but I never cracked Inside Macintosh. I've decided that I will simply not learn anything about any OS that is not Linux, and superficially at that. I program desktop computers in high level languages, despite total abstraction of the innards. I think the relative portability of Arduino code has been a huge boon for hobbyists because it encourages the formation of a community of people who can share code and knowledge, even if they're not all using the same processors, and despite sometimes needing to tweak code when porting it from one platform to another. This was also the case with early FORTRAN. Portability across processors revolutionized scientific computing.
venusenvy47 2y ago
Do you know of something that could get my Android tablet to switch between two AP's in my house? When I change locations in the house, it will never change to the stronger one if it has even the weakest signal that it was connected to. I can't find any Android app that tells the device to "change to a new AP if it is stronger than the current one".
- phoronixrly 2y ago
  Yes. The proven method is to A/restrict data rates to just high ones and B/lower the transmit power of your AP so that your devices can no longer maintain high enough data rates after a given point and are forced to disconnect. I am almost certain the run of the mill stock firmware does not offer you this option. Look into installing OpenWrt. Apart from that, OpenWrt now allows you to install and use usteer which offers a plethora of (802.11 standards-based) tools to manage client roaming from the AP side, including the APs exchanging information between themselves.
  - venusenvy47 2y ago
    I use Fresh Tomato as the firmware on my router, but I don't see anything in the documentation about "usteer". I'll search for a different term. I'm sure they have something, because they have a lot of active development.
    - phoronixrly 2y ago
      > dedicated for routers with Broadcom chipset You see, the first thing I look for when I want to buy a new AP is for it to NOT have a Broadcom chipset (https://openwrt.org/meta/infobox/broadcom_wifi https://openwrt.org/meta/infobox/broadcom_wifi)
      - venusenvy47 2y ago
        Can you recommend a decent AP without Broadcom? I've used FreshTomato exclusively for many years and haven't shopped for other alternatives.
Liftyee 2y ago
If it's mainly (largely) static IoT devices connecting to an SSID, why not make the SSID hidden so it doesn't fill device screens (controlled by humans who probably don't want the IoT network)? Most commercial IoT products I've used have an option to type a hidden SSID, and your own C++ code definitely can do that.
- zamadatix 2y ago
  Good highlight. In commercial deployments absolutely, I'd even recommend going as far as hiding any SSID you don't explicitly want people to be manually clicking on with their own devices (i.e. only guest and/or byod should be visible). Not because of security (as the conversation often tangents into) but because the support tickets for "I can't connect to <wrong SSID>" just go away and it clutters screens less as you say. For home it has its ups and downs depending how much the user cares about understanding Wi-Fi as part of their project vs just doing the minimum to make their project work. If you've already got a Wi-Fi scanner app you're well acquainted with reading (or are willing to spend a short bit of time reading about how to use one to troubleshoot an issue or select the best covering AP at a location) on one of your devices then you're probably the right crowd to hide the SSID at home as well.
  - gruez 2y ago
    >Good highlight. In commercial deployments absolutely, I'd even recommend going as far as hiding any SSID you don't explicitly want people to be manually clicking on with their own devices (i.e. only guest and/or byod should be visible). Not because of security (as the conversation often tangents into) but because the support tickets for "I can't connect to <wrong SSID>" just go away and it clutters screens less as you say. Thats bad for the anonymity of all your devices, though. Having a "hidden" network saved and on auto-connect means it'll be constantly broadcasting probe packets for those hidden networks.

Vurdentium 2y ago

Yes this is a skill issue. But Arduino ecosystem is full of superstition and bizarre hacks. It's cargo cult electronics. They will do anything to avoid reading documentation or writing robust code. Even the power saving recommendation here reeks of it. There is no effort to understand it. Someone on an Arduino forum recommends it, others start to echo it to try to appear like they know what they're talking about, it becomes lore in the Arduino world and you out yourself as a clueless newbie if you don't know to do esp_wifi_set_ps(WIFI_PS_NONE) without questioning anything because that's just the way it's done. It disables the radio in between AP beacons, so unless there's a bug in the implementation it should have no noticeable impact to a quiet WiFi station other than saving a lot of power.

serviceberry 2y ago
I used to say things like that, but come on: Arduino is targeted at hobbyists. More specifically, it's targeted at hobbyists who don't want to spend too much time learning hardware. If they did, they would be using a "bare" microcontroller better suited for their needs and costing one tenth the price. But they're not interested in microcontroller programming, they just want to get their art project done. It's the same thing that happened with computers. Billions of people use them, but most just want to access Facebook or use MS Word, not learn OS internals. It's a different world from where we used to be 30-40 years ago, and that's fine. We design simpler, more intuitive products for them. If a product meant for that group can't be used effectively by the target audience, I think the fault is with the designer, not with the user.
- toast0 2y ago
  > If they did, they would be using a "bare" microcontroller better suited for their needs and costing one tenth the price. Where do you get something like an ESP that's one tenth the price? ESPs are cheap and you can run Arduino, ESP-IDF directly, or fringe environments (I had some ESP8266 running NodeMCU because Lua made more sense to me than Arduino).
  - serviceberry 2y ago
    You can run Arduino code on anything, since it's mostly just a bit of syntactic sugar around C. But I'm sure you know what I mean. My point is that people who are attracted to Arduino are, by and large, not the kind of people who want to geek out about the inner workings of the MCU, and there's nothing wrong with that.
    - analog31 2y ago
      There's always a few of us. ;-) I'm pretty familiar with the microprocessor architecture of the 8-bit era that I grew up in, and have done a fair amount of hardware hacking. As things have gotten more complex, I've let some things slide, such as the complexity of pipelined architectures. Arduino is not even syntactic sugar any more. All it retains of its origins, that I'm aware of, is the weird setup() and loop() schtick. And you have limited control over what happens before your code starts. But with most Arduino compatible boards, you have full access to the vendor supplied libraries, and can go as deep as you want. These days my preferred platform at work is Teensy 4, and at home, the wireless enabled boards. I think Paul Stoffgren is some kind of 100x engineer. But life is short. Over my 61 years, I've carefully rationed the brain cells that I devote to innards of technologies that will soon be obsolete. I read the Turbo Pascal manuals cover to cover, and The Art Of Electronics, but I never cracked Inside Macintosh. I've decided that I will simply not learn anything about any OS that is not Linux, and superficially at that. I program desktop computers in high level languages, despite total abstraction of the innards. I think the relative portability of Arduino code has been a huge boon for hobbyists because it encourages the formation of a community of people who can share code and knowledge, even if they're not all using the same processors, and despite sometimes needing to tweak code when porting it from one platform to another. This was also the case with early FORTRAN. Portability across processors revolutionized scientific computing.

venusenvy47 2y ago

Do you know of something that could get my Android tablet to switch between two AP's in my house? When I change locations in the house, it will never change to the stronger one if it has even the weakest signal that it was connected to. I can't find any Android app that tells the device to "change to a new AP if it is stronger than the current one".

phoronixrly 2y ago
Yes. The proven method is to A/restrict data rates to just high ones and B/lower the transmit power of your AP so that your devices can no longer maintain high enough data rates after a given point and are forced to disconnect. I am almost certain the run of the mill stock firmware does not offer you this option. Look into installing OpenWrt. Apart from that, OpenWrt now allows you to install and use usteer which offers a plethora of (802.11 standards-based) tools to manage client roaming from the AP side, including the APs exchanging information between themselves.
- venusenvy47 2y ago
  I use Fresh Tomato as the firmware on my router, but I don't see anything in the documentation about "usteer". I'll search for a different term. I'm sure they have something, because they have a lot of active development.
  - phoronixrly 2y ago
    > dedicated for routers with Broadcom chipset You see, the first thing I look for when I want to buy a new AP is for it to NOT have a Broadcom chipset (https://openwrt.org/meta/infobox/broadcom_wifi https://openwrt.org/meta/infobox/broadcom_wifi)
    - venusenvy47 2y ago
      Can you recommend a decent AP without Broadcom? I've used FreshTomato exclusively for many years and haven't shopped for other alternatives.

Liftyee 2y ago

If it's mainly (largely) static IoT devices connecting to an SSID, why not make the SSID hidden so it doesn't fill device screens (controlled by humans who probably don't want the IoT network)? Most commercial IoT products I've used have an option to type a hidden SSID, and your own C++ code definitely can do that.

zamadatix 2y ago
Good highlight. In commercial deployments absolutely, I'd even recommend going as far as hiding any SSID you don't explicitly want people to be manually clicking on with their own devices (i.e. only guest and/or byod should be visible). Not because of security (as the conversation often tangents into) but because the support tickets for "I can't connect to <wrong SSID>" just go away and it clutters screens less as you say. For home it has its ups and downs depending how much the user cares about understanding Wi-Fi as part of their project vs just doing the minimum to make their project work. If you've already got a Wi-Fi scanner app you're well acquainted with reading (or are willing to spend a short bit of time reading about how to use one to troubleshoot an issue or select the best covering AP at a location) on one of your devices then you're probably the right crowd to hide the SSID at home as well.
- gruez 2y ago
  >Good highlight. In commercial deployments absolutely, I'd even recommend going as far as hiding any SSID you don't explicitly want people to be manually clicking on with their own devices (i.e. only guest and/or byod should be visible). Not because of security (as the conversation often tangents into) but because the support tickets for "I can't connect to <wrong SSID>" just go away and it clutters screens less as you say. Thats bad for the anonymity of all your devices, though. Having a "hidden" network saved and on auto-connect means it'll be constantly broadcasting probe packets for those hidden networks.