I have used the Blynk Sketch builder to create an example sketch for my arduino uno and (cheap copy) serial wifi shield based on ESP8266.
It so far working nicely and sending data of interest (temperature values) back to blynk.
I want to move the project to its final home (greenhouse) but make sure the wifi isnt dropping out. I would like to pass the signal strength back ove a virtual pin.
from what I can research, the customary call for RSSI is
long rssi = WiFi.RSSI();
the example sketch from the builder only seems to use the
The way that shield is using the ESP8266 basically turns it into a simple serial based WiFi modem for the UNO, so I don’t think you can take advantage of those standalone ESP8266 commands. Mainly becasue your sketch is running on the UNO, not the ESP.
I am working off of theory, as I don’t have any ESP based toys, But if someone else sees any logic flaws with my edumacated guess, they will hopefully chime in.
why don’t you just simply try and see if it works or not?
that would be more relevant than monitoring the wifi signal strength. as far as it works it doesn’t matters, and vice versa. i’m not sure what esp you have, but if you can afford buy one with ceramic antenna, not pcb antenna, or even better, buy one with external antenna port and use external antenna. that can increase the range significantly!
Hardware-wise I’m pretty sure it can do it because one of my earlier attempts of hacking a script together worked for a wifi test with the WiFiEsp.h library. I could print the RSSI but I ran out of space on the Uno when i added in all the onewire and dallas temperature libraries needed for the temp sensor.
Reasonable comment @wanek - I just wanted to be a bit more scientific with it. If there was a simple function call I could make to get the data using the libraries included from sketch builder.
I did give it a whirl too but I failed to get a connection from the greenhouse where I already have an iobridge wifi IOT device running fine.
If your shield allows the flexibility, You could effectively “swap” the roles and have the ESP run the show (running your Blynk sketch and ESP commands) while treating the UNO as a tacked on shield that supports additional IO options… usually just running “normal” arduino code, and the two communicate via I2C or serial.
But if someone else sees any logic flaws with my edumacated guess, they will hopefully chime in.