Suggestion: Allow BSSID lock

[jojos38]

Hi!

It would be nice if we could lock the BSSID in the Wi-Fi settings instead of forcing it to 0 in the code

It's very handy for setups with repeaters and such to force the device to connect to a specific router and not to a repeater

[lorow]

That's honestly a good idea, we've never previously encountered anybody with such setup so it never got implemented, but I don't see any issues with adding that!

In fact, it looks like it should be fairly easy to get working: https://espressif-docs.readthedocs-hosted.com/projects/arduino-esp32/en/latest/api/wifi.html#begin, for our case we can still stick with STA config:

typedef struct {
    uint8_t ssid[32];                         /**< SSID of target AP. */
    uint8_t password[64];                     /**< Password of target AP. */
    wifi_scan_method_t scan_method;           /**< Do all channel scan or fast scan */
    bool bssid_set;                           /**< Whether set MAC address of target AP or not. Generally, station_config.bssid_set needs to be 0; and it needs to be 1 only when users need to check the MAC address of the AP.*/
    uint8_t bssid[6];                         /**< MAC address of target AP*/
    [...]
} wifi_sta_config_t;

We also apparently can get it while scanning so we can also display that in the flashing tool while selecting a network:

typedef struct {
    uint8_t bssid[6];                     /**< MAC address of AP */
    uint8_t ssid[33];                     /**< SSID of AP */
    uint8_t primary;                      /**< Channel of AP */
    [...]
} wifi_ap_record_t;

A couple of systtems would need to get updated to support it, but that shouldn't be too hard to get working.
Stuff like:

• hardcoded network will have to have support for optional BSSID
• scanning will have to return BSSID
• Storage will have to store BSSID as optional value
• Setting wifi will have to accept BSSID as an optional param (optional additions are fine, we won't break API compatibility)
• WiFi manager will have to be able to handle it as well, provide it if stored, skip if not

[jojos38]

If it could be any useful, I was able to force it for now using this:

static const uint8_t ALLOWED_BSSID[6] = {0xAB, ..., ..., ..., ..., ...};
memcpy(_wifi_cfg.sta.bssid, ALLOWED_BSSID, 6);
_wifi_cfg.sta.bssid_set = 1; // Don't use specific BSSID

in wifiManager.cpp

It also seems like it's already copied into memory at some point in WiFiScanner.cpp

network.rssi = ap_records[i].rssi;
memcpy(network.mac, ap_records[i].bssid, 6);
network.auth_mode = ap_records[i].authmode;

[lorow]

    for (const auto& network : networks)
    {
        nlohmann::json networkItem;
        networkItem["ssid"] = network.ssid;
        networkItem["channel"] = network.channel;
        networkItem["rssi"] = network.rssi;
        char mac_str[18];
        sprintf(mac_str, "%02x:%02x:%02x:%02x:%02x:%02x", network.mac[0], network.mac[1], network.mac[2], network.mac[3], network.mac[4], network.mac[5]);
        networkItem["mac_address"] = mac_str;
        networkItem["auth_mode"] = network.auth_mode;
        networksJson.push_back(networkItem);
    }

We also seem to be already returning the mac address in the scan results, this should be fair easier then!