Is possible to connect many ESP8266 (station mode) to one ESP (AP mode)?

[mad474]

Well, at least it "pointed" you in the right direction where to be able to intensify research. Hint: Downloads/SDK Release Notes, around SDK V1.1, IIRC. HTH!

[kfricke]

...
Is possible to connect *simultaneously* many ESP8266 (station mode) to one ESP8266 (ap mode)?
...

tbh, the following answer does only rely on my non-MicroPython experience with the ESP...

The ESP does support the following modes:

• Station
• Soft-AP (access point)
• Soft-AP+Station

What exactly do you mean with "connect"? And do you really mean access point mode only? In pure access point mode the ESP does not respond to any OSI layer 3+ communication at all, it only manages the IEEE 802.11 communication on OSI layer 1 and 2.

In any station mode the ESP does only support a very limited number of network connections originating to/from itself. This implies that even when in Soft-AP+Station mode, the ESP can only manage a very small number of connections(e.g. when acting as a TCP- or UDP-server).

In Soft-AP mode the number of clients which are able to communicate "across/within" the provided wireless network (identified by the managed wireless service set (SSID) is not documented. The official ESP SDK from Espressif tells no maximum number of managed clients.
The DHCP server lease range example is very small (6 addresses), but no hard numbers or limits are told anywhere in the current SDK documentation!

So lets assume the ESP can manage a lot (but to be tested number) of wireless clients while in access point mode, but the number of network connections (in means of IP packets) the ESP can respond to is *very* limited.

[mad474]

In Soft-AP mode the number of clients which are able to communicate "across/within" the provided wireless network (identified by the managed wireless service set (SSID) is not documented.

Well, indeed not very precisely. Call it estimation?
http://bbs.espressif.com/viewtopic.php? ... tion#p1832
highlighted sequence

For PoC please see also:
http://bbs.espressif.com/download/file.php?id=1203
on page 164 "uint8 max_connection; // default 4, max 4"

[beyonlo]

In Soft-AP mode the number of clients which are able to communicate "across/within" the provided wireless network (identified by the managed wireless service set (SSID) is not documented.

Well, indeed not very precisely. Call it estimation?
http://bbs.espressif.com/viewtopic.php? ... tion#p1832
highlighted sequence

For PoC please see also:
http://bbs.espressif.com/download/file.php?id=1203
on page 164 "uint8 max_connection; // default 4, max 4"

Thank you mad474.

The strange thing is the divergence between the two documents for the max clients connected:
On the first url say: 4.ESP8266 soft-AP can connected to 8 stations at most, softap_config.max_connection default is 4
On the second url (pdf) say: uint8 max_connection; // default 4, max 4