Yes, nearly all my devices (exclusive router and pihole) are dhcp clients. I manage fixed ip address for all these devices in my dhcp server of pihole.
But i access the ESP32 devices via their dns hostname.
I could also imagine that the behavior of ESP32 devices would be different if they will get a new and different ip address after their lease timeout.

ok Reiner, i believe i know what you mean:
On one Hand you want to have a human readable Hostname as you mentioned like “mysensor” with an suffix like 1, 2, 3 to get it unique. But this cannot be a hex string containing a mac address.
On the other hand you think about how they come up with such an unique name..
Hmm good question how to solve..

See my other post further down. It worked for me: 2 ESP32, Windows 11, Android 16 mobile phone, Chrome Browser on both in my case. All connected to the same 2.4 GHz Wifi of the domestic provider-configured router-box of a major internet provider here in Switzerland. Still have to try if there is any chance to have some of the devices on the 5 Ghz Wifi or the LAN-Ports provided by the same router in parallel but that’s more a question what broadcasts the router bridges and what not…

Thanks for the hint! I wasn’t aware. The required re-work on some existing projects kept me from looking into it yet but with mDNS as another (better working) goodie there will be more reward finally moving on…

Andreas, I hear you. But setting/getting that “secret” from the ESP32 is an extra step. This use case is nicer with mDNS: you have a bunch of ESP32, they all auto-generate their unique name (based on MAC or random number which they persist). They all use mDNS under name “mysensor”, naming conflicts get resolved by the protocol negotiating -2 -3 when they start up. You can reach their internal webserver through mysensor.local or mysensor-2.local or mysensor-3.local without ever worrying about the name or IP-Address they chose or got assigned. If you just use these sensors for yourself it is a small difference but still comfy. Even more so if you give them away.

“..you still have to somehow know the mac address..”

easily put this lines:
String named;
WiFi.mode(WIFI_STA);
named = (String) WiFi.macAddress();
WiFi.disconnect();

I did not check if it is necessary to bring the esp into station mode before. This simple code lines even work in the top of the setup routine..

Hi.
Thanks for your feedback.
To use version 3 of the ESP32 core on VS Code, you need to switch to pioarduino: https://randomnerdtutorials.com/vs-code-pioarduino-ide-esp32/
PlatformIO no longer supports updates and is stuck at version 2.

Regards,
Sara

I’d like to suggest using WiFiManager by tzapu. It eliminates the need to hardcode WiFi credentials.