ESP8266 Community Forum

My ESP connects to my Wifi but it's AP is still on ("AI-Thinker-xxxxx"). I thought either it's in AP-mode or it connects to another Wifi. The AP's name is irritation, too. Thought it was "ESP 2" when in AP mode. Any ideas?

If I'm way off mark here someone will steer you better...

Your computer wifi connections show Access Points you can connect to, but some of them are shadows of things you previously connected to that have the same mac address as you are using now with a different node name.

I think forlotto mentions somewhere that you should reboot your router as well as your esp if you change its name.

And I think the AP name by default is just ESP - I suspect mmiscools ESP2 shown in the getting started guide is probably because he had more than one ESP AP available at that time, so just called one of them ESP2. If you go into go into settings you can change the AP name to be whatever you want, but you will still have the old shadow names hanging around until you give the wifi router and computer amnesia.

All that I've just said is just regarding AP mode, if you've also already connected as a client node to the wifi network then you can be haunted by those ghosts as well!

To be more precise:

1. ESP is set to "Station Mode" and is connected to my router (AP mode fields are left empty).
2. If I scan for WiFi networks on my laptop/mobile/tablet there is another AP called "AI-Thinker"
3. This AP must be my ESP (because no one arround here has a ESP for sure)
4. It's not about "why does my router show's offline devices"

Q: Why does the ESP still show as an AP, even if it is set to station mode?

TheWaldorfer wrote:1. ESP is set to "Station Mode" and is connected to my router (AP mode fields are left empty).

It is probably set to dual mode, which is a clever feature. With this Arduino sketch you can see the web server on the WiFi network to which it is connected plus the ESP8266 WiFi network as well. It will even have the same IP address on both WiFi networks.

TheWaldorfer wrote:2. If I scan for WiFi networks on my laptop/mobile/tablet there is another AP called "AI-Thinker"

Be careful with this. Many computers continue to show WiFi networks that no longer exist. They just assume they are still there.

TheWaldorfer wrote:Q: Why does the ESP still show as an AP, even if it is set to station mode?

A: It doesn't