Captive portal and WLED app - device inconsistencies

1

I would like confirmation or comments on the following…

  1. Boot ESP32 controller which has never connected to the local wifi
  2. The controller goes into Wireless AP mode and broadcasts a SSID
  3. Connect the Android phone to the SSID with default password
  4. Ignore all phone popups
  5. Go into the WLED app, and the device doesn’t show
  6. Go back to the phone wifi settings, 3-dot button, choose “use network as is”
  7. Go back to the WLED app, and now the controller shows up

Other users do steps 1,2,3,7 and it just works.

The problem is that I have 10 course participants with a wide variety of phones, each with different user interfaces. I waste a lot of the course time trying to get the controller to show up in the app.

I suspect that the barrier is an additional security layer or different approach to local APs.

Any ideas?

Thanks

Brendon

2

At step 4 the phone is probably asking you if you want to connect to an AP that doesn’t provide Internet, so do not ignore that question. Different phones are going to handle not having Internet in different ways.

The best solution would be to connect the devices to a dedicated Wi-Fi AP with Internet access before the class and then have users connect to the AP and access an assigned esp32 IP address. Otherwise you will have to deal with how each phone manages Wi-Fi.

3

Good solution