Wifi reports one MAC, ESPNOW scan, finds different MAC, how can I find the right one?

1

I’m using ESP-NOW to send data to a “client”. Very small data packs. I have it working at the moment by using manually inserted MAC addresses (hard coded). So, I have the proper MAC addresses, it’s reported at boot, and when programming the device.
But, it would be nice if I could use the scanner in the Arduino ESP32/ESSPNOW examples, as the boards I use may change from time to time. (all this code does, is scan the network, looking for an SSID prefix, then reads the associated MAC address.
But when the scanner runs, it reports a very similar MAC address. Usually, off by one digit. How can I tell the scan code to to obtain the correct address?

This is the relevant code from the scan example:

if (SSID.indexOf("Slave") == 0) {
        // SSID of interest
        Serial.print(i + 1); Serial.print(": "); Serial.print(SSID); Serial.print(" ["); Serial.print(BSSIDstr); Serial.print("]"); Serial.print(" ("); Serial.print(RSSI); Serial.print(")"); Serial.println("");
        // Get BSSID => Mac Address of the Slave
        int mac[6];

        if ( 6 == sscanf(BSSIDstr.c_str(), "%x:%x:%x:%x:%x:%x",  &mac[0], &mac[1], &mac[2], &mac[3], &mac[4], &mac[5] ) ) {
          for (int ii = 0; ii < 6; ++ii ) {
            slaves[SlaveCnt].peer_addr[ii] = (uint8_t) mac[ii];
          }
        }
        slaves[SlaveCnt].channel = CHANNEL; // pick a channel
        slaves[SlaveCnt].encrypt = 0; // no encryption
        SlaveCnt++;
2

You can use ESP-NOW broadcast.
This will reduce the complexity (scan first, collect mac addresses, send data to selected addresses…) of your project a lot.

Take a look at the broadcast examples:

Note:
These examples requires Espressif Arduino 3.x.
You have to use pioarduino’s espressif32 platform!

3

Thanks! I downloaded that library before, but I thought the examples were the same.
It’ll take me a bit to look at it and test it (for my application).

But… do you think this will work in both master and slave? By that, I mean, can they both scan and find out what’s out there? So no addresses, in either master/slave are hard coded?

I “think” that was one problem with the other example, it was master/slave oriented, the master finds the slaves. But the slaves didn’t find the masters. And putting the “master scan” on the slave, caused other issues. (but I’m not positive on that, yet)