ESP8266 Community Forum

- Thu Oct 27, 2016 2:27 am #57199 I'm searching for a solution to let 2 (or more) esp8266 interact with each other, without being connected to an access-point. Furthermore, I need the signal-strength of each packet when it is received by the module.

While wifi_send_packet_freedom() works like a charm, wifi_promiscuous_rx_cb() only seems to provide the first 128 bytes?! What is the reason behind this? Using Linux, every WiFi hardware (that supports monitor-mode) is able to provide the whole packet including the radiotap header.

Is the limit of receiving 128 bytes removed in the future, or are there any other options for above scenario?

- Mon Oct 31, 2016 11:34 am #57447 @kazu,
I am certain that martinayotte posted a couple of sketches for client/server connections:
http://www.esp8266.com/viewtopic.php?f=27&t=4080#p23577

As far as promiscuous mode, it appears that Espressif has mixed ideas about providing this as full-featured. I did a version recently: https://www.hackster.io/rayburne/esp8266-mini-sniff-f6b93a but stopped short of trying to display the packet data.

The online document from Espressif regarding "sniffer" has been removed from their site. One can still find an older copy of the document on the Internet but it does not appear to be very current. I have attached same since it provides the low-level structure being returned.

Ray

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- Sun Nov 13, 2016 9:37 am #58080 Thx for your reply and the attached Document!

I somewhat understand the concerns they might have. However, every 9$ Atheros Chip together with Unix is able to achieve this. So ESP8266 would not be the first hardware to support it. There are loads of others that already do.

Furthermore, many new [non-dubious] scenarios would emerge if they supported this. In my case, things would be totally fine just knowing the RSSI for every packet without requiring full promiscuous access. And there are many others around the Forum requesting exactly the same thing.

Maybe Espressif just has not yet recognized the full potential of such features and will only change their mind as soon as competitors release their chips [including those features]...