Say I have an APP and a hardware box tha contains an ESP and I want to sell it to the pubic. I would like the user just to enter in the SSID and password to connect the ESP to the users wifi router through my App. Obviously my App needs to transmit this to the ESP before it connects and then the APP needs the IP address assigned by the router to do its job
How to I easily get the user to enter the IP address of the ESP? Most general users, in my experience, would not be able to easily find the IP address. In nearly all things they set up these days its purely select the SSID and enter a password the IP is often not even mentioned.
I thought about using a fixed IP, but of course I have no idea of the set up of the user's router, hence I see problems with this technique. Are they on 198.xxx xx or 10.xxx.xx ? What if the IP is used elsewhere?
An option is to set up an adhoc network and download the users SSID/password and then command the ESP to connect. This is the WYFLY idea ( can I do an adhoc with ESP?) But while this gets over the first hurdle of the connection to the SSID I still have to know the IP set by the router to continue communicating with the APP so I am no better off
A third option is to bundle a small IP seeker with the app so the user can identify the IP once connected, but I still have to make the connection first to the right SSID, hence I have to have the user select the correct SSID
You can see the conundrum. I need to know the IP before the EPS connects to it!
The other option is that my APP seeks a fixed 'name' within the router, and can identify the IP.. Is this possible? Sort of like the beacon idea on bluetooth. I am just not familiar enough with IP/routers to answer this, and cannot find any pertinent information that I can understand. Again, I still have to make the EPS connect to the right SSID
My app is written in TechBasic for an iPad, and this requires the IP address to set the communication port. At the moment its on Bluetooth responding and connecting to a known item name
Hope someone can give me a methodology for this.