How network.WLAN reports a mac address

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Jim.S
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Joined: Fri Dec 18, 2015 7:36 pm

How network.WLAN reports a mac address

Post by Jim.S » Sun Jun 23, 2019 8:18 pm

I'm just starting to play with my pyboard-D and I am a bit confused how it reports mac addresses. for instance,
>>> w.config('mac')
b'HJ0\x01\xb2\xd0'

I understand that the b' means that it is a byte string and that the H means they are unsigned short integers, but I dont understand why there only seem to be three integers in the mac address. I am used to seeing mac addresses as a group of six integers in hexadecimal, like this, ab:cd:ef:12:34:56. I have just learnt from the internet that the first three integers in a mac address identify the manufacturer, is that why the w.config('mac') only reports three integers? Is the J0 something to do with the manufacturers OUI code? (OUI={Organizationally Unique Identifier}

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Roberthh
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Re: How network.WLAN reports a mac address

Post by Roberthh » Sun Jun 23, 2019 9:05 pm

The byte string is all bytes, 6 in total. H is just a byte with the hex value 0x48, J is 0x49, 0 is 0x30, so all in all it is:
48:49:30:01:b2:d0. To see the usual representation, you can convet it to hex using ubinascii.hexlify()

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pythoncoder
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Re: How network.WLAN reports a mac address

Post by pythoncoder » Wed Jun 26, 2019 6:33 am

Code: Select all

>>> mac = b'HJ0\x01\xb2\xd0'
>>> '{:02x}:{:02x}:{:02x}:{:02x}:{:02x}:{:02x}'.format(*mac)
'48:4a:30:01:b2:d0'
>>> 
Peter Hinch
Index to my micropython libraries.

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