ESP-NOW peer list issues

[timmbogner]

I've been working a lot with ESP-NOW controllers recently, getting a jump on my holiday light setup. The normal controller registration method was seemingly working fine at first. To review that process: ESP-NOW controllers send a "register" packet to the gateway. The gateway then adds the peer to the 'peer list' that is built-in (internal) to ESP-NOW functionality, and also an external peer list maintained by the FDRS gateway, which is an array that also contains a "last seen" variable. Adding the address to the internal peer list allows the ability to send one message to every peer on the list with a null-addressed ESP-NOW send command esp_now_send(0, (uint8_t *)&thePacket, sizeof(thePacket));.

When I sent using that method, however, the transmission was only received by the first four devices that were added to the peer list. Instead, I replaced it with a for() loop that just cycled through all of the peers and send them an individual packet. Now is where it's a bit interesting:

• When the for() loop sent every message one after another with no delay, the behavior matched the issue I was having with the internal peer list. It failed after the first four messages.
• When I waited for the send callback to be called before moving to the next message/recipient, everything worked as intended.

So that is what I've done, and it is working great so far! Details on my holiday project are coming soon!