Does configuring the WiFi mode write to FLASH?

[WZab]

I have a ESP32-based Micropython device (described later as "controller"), which needs to connect often to various WiFi Access Points.
It is used to control equipment accessible via WiFi in a special mode - each controlled device has its own WPA2-protected WiFi AP with hidden ESSID.

The controlled device remains silent until the controller connects to it. When the system works, the controller needs to connect to various controlled devices in a sequence. It can be easily done with:

Code: Select all

wlan.connect('essid', 'password')

The important question, however, is if such reconfiguration of the network is associated with writing to the FLASH? If yes, the frequent reconfiguration may wear the FLASH and result in fast malfunction of the device.

TIA & Regards,
Wojtek

[pythoncoder]

This is a factor on ESP8266, but not (as far as I know) on ESP32.

[jimmo]

Like @pythoncoder says, this was definitely true on ESP8266 but I have not seen any evidence that this is the case on ESP32.

You'd have to look in the ESP-IDF. MicroPython calls esp_wifi_connect(). Unfortunately some of the WiFi stuff on ESP32 is implemented in a binary blob though, but I suspect anything that wrote to flash would likely be done in the IDF code.