ESP8266 Wi-Fi Direct

Wireless & IoT Wifi
1

I bought one of the [new 4MB ESP8266 Wi-Fi modules for its Wi-Fi Direct support. Where can I find an example on how to configure it for Wi-Fi Direct?

Thanks!](WiFi Module - ESP8266 (4MB Flash) - WRL-17146 - SparkFun Electronics)

2

I googled "esp8266 point to point) and a link to the Arduino core example was in the results:

https://arduino-esp8266.readthedocs.io/ … mples.html

3

Santa_Impersonator:
I googled "esp8266 point to point) and a link to the Arduino core example was in the results:

https://arduino-esp8266.readthedocs.io/ … mples.html

This isn’t useful. Of course you can configure it as an AP and/or use a custom peer-to-peer protocol on a higher protocol level, but one of the listed features is ‘Wi-Fi Direct’, which is a specific protocol with built-in support in e.g. Android and smart TV operating systems, and is what I’m interested in.

4

See e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wi-Fi_Direct.

5

It seems that the WiFi-Direct is specific to the ESP8266 developer tools: https://nurdspace.nl/ESP8266. Since it’s not a SparkFun original product and it was made by someone else, you’ll probably have to put in extra work to get it running.

Here are some resources that help with the module:

https://github.com/esp8266/esp8266-wiki/wiki

https://github.com/jcmvbkbc/gcc-xtensa

https://room-15.github.io/blog/2015/03/ … reference/

https://www.esp8266.com/

6

I think you might have misunderstood the information I provided. From the wikipedia article (you linked), under the Technical description section, it specifies:

Wi-Fi Direct essentially embeds a software access point (“Soft AP”), into any device that must support Direct.

The product page also specifies:

Wi-Fi Direct (P2P), soft-AP

Therefore, I linked an example to configure the module as a soft-AP. From which, you can access the ESP8266 module directly over a WiFi connection. Otherwise, if you are referring to an Android specific protocol… that I am unsure of. You will need to reach out to https://www.espressif.com/ directly about that.

7

Thank you for the reply!

Santa_Impersonator:
I think you might have misunderstood the information I provided. From the wikipedia article (you linked), under the Technical description section, it specifies:

Wi-Fi Direct essentially embeds a software access point (“Soft AP”), into any device that must support Direct.

The product page also specifies:

Wi-Fi Direct (P2P), soft-AP

Therefore, I linked an example to configure the module as a soft-AP. From which, you can access the ESP8266 module directly over a WiFi connection. Otherwise, if you are referring to an Android specific protocol… that I am unsure of. You will need to reach out to https://www.espressif.com/ directly about that.

‘Wi-Fi Direct’ (previously called ‘Wi-Fi P2P’) is a registered trademark and refers to a specific system architecture and a number of protocols, of which essentially the lowest layer is a device acting as a (soft) AP. So while a device does need to be able to function as an AP to be Wi-Fi Direct-compliant, that in itself is not sufficient.

I was under the impression that the module supports the whole Wi-Fi Direct system, but that does not seem to be the case considering there’s at least one part of the Wi-Fi Direct standard it doesn’t seem to support: WPS in AP mode (see https://www.espressif.com/sites/default … set_en.pdf: p.36, “WPS must be used when the ESP8266 Station is enabled.”).