Issues with ESPs and Unifi APs

I’m having issues with my Unifi setup and my ESP32s.

Every single ESP shows as AP/Client Signal Balance - Poor, while any other device such as laptop or phone, does not.

It also shows the wifi standard as wifi 4.

Any unifi pros out there. Im also connecting devices to a hidden SSID, therefor I have fast connect enabled and I can see that some devices are connecting to the wrong ap. Is there a way around this? Can we specify a BSSID for example?

Thanks!

Are they connecting to the nearest access point?

My ESPs weren’t.

What I did was this:

Along with my global roaming 2.4GHz and 5GHz wifi networks I set up a 2.4GHz network unique to each access point. Then in the esp devices specified the closest network (SSID) to connect to.

Now ESPHome has improved a lot since I had to do this. I think it might now be possible to specify the AP to connect to by specifying the BSSID as well as the SSID in ESPHome.

I have had similar issues., but from the unifi interface I had the option to lock it to acces point.

I’ve found that I’m using this option far more then expected for static devices.

Yea ok so to test and confirm, I disabled fast connect and the SSID is no longer hidden, and everything seems to be way more stable now.

@tom_l good idea, I see there is a option in the wifi setup of esphome to specify a BSSID, could this work by locking it to an AP from within the esp32 esphome config.

@safritjuh88 this is good to know too, I will look at this.

bssid (Optional, string): The connection’s BSSID (MAC address). BSSIDs must consist of six two-digit hexadecimal values separated by colon characters (”:”). All letters must be in upper case.

WiFi Component — ESPHome

Might give this a go with a spare esp tonight.

Ok, i’ve confirmed that this works.

wifi:
  networks:
  - ssid: !secret wifi_ssid
    password: !secret wifi_password
    bssid: 74:AC:B9:F4:C8:E3
  fast_connect: true

This will connect to the specified AP using the BSSID even when hidden.

2 Likes

Nice. I’ll stick with my method though as I have other devices that don’t support specifying the BSSID.

Yea, fair enough.

Just a good workaround for the connect to first AP issue when using fast_coonnect I guess too.