UDP-Ranger - a simple ESP8266 range tester

The problem

I tried to find reliable information on the range of the ESP-12 series modules, but was not quite happy with what I found. Neither the use of highly directional antennas (or is it "antennae"?) nor the selection of client devices seemed right to draw conclusions about the actual range.

EDIT: see the 1st part of my video about the tester here.
EDIT: and here is the 2nd part if the video with the results

The idea

ESP-8266 modules at both ends of the connection seemed like a good idea to me. Normally you would use a simple ping-test to see if packets are lost on the way between the modules.

ICMP

Despite the fact that the LWIP stack in NodeMCU does handle ICMP properly, I have yet to see a "Ping" program to send/revceive ICMP echo-requests/replies.

TCP

TCP connections between two NodeMCU endpoints are super easy. But the TCP  protocol will do it's best to compensate the loss of packets, so we wouldn't detect missing packets until the connection breaks up completely.

UDP

UDP does not provide such a recovery mechanism for lost packets, so the application has to handle that. We can use that easily to find out when packets go missing.

The solution

Ok, so UDP it is. We'll simply connect an ESP-12e module in station-mode to an ESP-12f module in soft-ap mode and send UDP packets from the ESP-12e to the ESP-12f module.
The payload of each packet is a numer that is incremented by one for each packet. So if a packet is missing, it is easy to detect.

The ESP-modules

What you need

• the server.lua script (to put on the module with the OLED)
• the client.lua script
• Geekcreit-Doit Dev-board (the smaller one with the ESP-12f module)
• The classic V3-NodeMcu-Lua-WIFI-Development board (with ESP-12e module)
• Two USB Power banks like this one or that one
• breadboard
• dupont jumper wires (male/male)

The server.lua script

 local LED_PIN1 = 4  
 gpio.mode(LED_PIN1, gpio.OUTPUT)  
 local sw1 = true  
 wifi.setmode(wifi.SOFTAP)  
 cfg={}  
    cfg.ssid="AReResearch"  
    wifi.ap.config(cfg)  
 function init_OLED(sda,scl)  
    sla = 0x3c  
    i2c.setup(0, sda, scl, i2c.SLOW)  
    disp = u8g.ssd1306_128x64_i2c(sla)  
    disp:setFont(u8g.font_6x10)  
    disp:setFontRefHeightExtendedText()  
    disp:setDefaultForegroundColor()  
    disp:setFontPosTop()  
 end  
 init_OLED(5,6)  
 err=0  
 cold=1  
 disp:firstPage()  
   repeat  
    disp:drawStr(0, 10, "AReResearch UDP-Ranger")  
    disp:drawStr(5, 35, "Waiting for client...")  
   until disp:nextPage() == false  
 s=net.createServer(net.UDP)   
 s:on("receive",function(s,c)  
   print("Sequence="..c.." Previous:"..cold)  
 if ((cold+1)~=tonumber(c)) then  
   err=err+1  
   end  
 disp:firstPage()  
   repeat  
    disp:drawStr(0, 10, "AReResearch UDP-Ranger")  
    disp:drawStr(5, 35, "Packet Nr:" .. c)  
    disp:drawStr(5, 45, "Errors:" .. err)  
     until disp:nextPage() == false  
     if (sw1) then  
       gpio.write(LED_PIN1, gpio.LOW)  
     else  
       gpio.write(LED_PIN1, gpio.HIGH)  
     end  
   sw1 = not sw1  
 cold=c  
 end)   
 s:listen(8888)  

The client-lua script

 wifi.setmode(wifi.STATION)  
 wifi.sta.config("AReResearch","")  
 wifi.sta.connect()  
 LED_PIN1 = 4  
 gpio.mode(LED_PIN1, gpio.OUTPUT)  
 print (wifi.sta.getip())  
 x=1  
 tmr.alarm(2, 1000, 1, function()  
   conn = net.createConnection(net.UDP, 0)  
   conn:connect(8888,"192.168.4.1")  
   conn:send(x)  
   conn:close()  
   conn = nil  
   x=x+1  
   print (x)  
   if x>1000 then x=1 end  
   p=tonumber(wifi.sta.status())  
   print (p)  
   if p == 5  
     then  
     gpio.write(LED_PIN1, gpio.LOW)  
     print ("LED OFF")  
     else  
     gpio.write(LED_PIN1, gpio.HIGH)  
     print ("LED ON")  
     end  
 end)  

Ok, the programming is admittedly a bit sloppy. The counter will simply roll over at 1000 packets and will thus increment the "lost packets" counter by one. It is good enough for me at the moment.

Start the "server"module first

The "client" has sent packets

How to use this

Once the client module has connected to the "server", the server module's  LED will be toggled every time a packet is received. More info in how many packets have been missed is shown on the OLED.
So it is easy to tell when the connection starts breaking up.

The results

My first test run gave me a pretty stable connection up to 300 meters. Beyond 400m I couldn't get anything at all.