ESP32-CSI-Collection-and-Display

This is a tool to collect and display the CSI information from ESP32 devices and display them in a computer in real time. The ESP32 device does not need to be connected to the computer using a wire (using serial port). The ESP32 devices will send CSI data to target computer using mDNS to resolve IP address and UDP to deliver packets. I also wrote a python3 script to receive and display CSI info in real time. It supports multiple sources of data to be displayed in the same time.

Based on this tool, I implemented an IoT application to demonstrate the usage of this tool. This IoT system detects the motion according to a threshold. If the CSI deviation exceeds the threshold, the program on the computer will send HTTP request to a HTTP camera in the network to stream video.

This tool is partially based on https://github.com/StevenMHernandez/ESP32-CSI-Tool

To summarize:

• A tool to collect and display CSI data form ESP32 devices wirelessly in real-time.
• An IoT application based on this tool to detect motion and wake up a HTTP camera.

How to use

• Preparation: Update your devices' mac addresses in the code. In ./active_ap/main/main.c and ./active_client/main/main.c, a list of mac addresses is used to filter out CSI of packets from unwanted devices. Using active_ap as an example, the mac address list definition is shown below

  static const uint8_t PEER_NODE_NUM = 4; // self is also included.
  static const char peer_mac_list[8][20] = {
    "3c:61:05:4c:36:cd", // esp32 official dev board 0, as soft ap
    "3c:61:05:4c:3c:28", // esp32 official dev board 1
    "08:3a:f2:6c:d3:bc", // esp32 unofficial dev board 0
    "08:3a:f2:6e:05:94", // esp32 unofficial dev board 1
  };

  Upadte the code above with the mac addresses of your own devices. For example, if you are using one ESP32 as AP, and another one as client, set PEER_NODE_NUM=2 and replace the first two addresses in peer_mac_list. The mac address of your device will be printed out over serial port (monitor of esp-idf) at the begining of programing running. Also, output from serial port can be useful for debuging.

• To use ESP32 as a soft-AP and collect CSI data from received packekts.

  1. Flash the program in './active_ap' to one ESP32 board. A few configs need be updated according to you devices in 'main.c'. To send the data to the right host, you need to change the mDNS hostname.

     #define TARGET_HOSTNAME            "XXXXXXXX" // put your computer mDNS name here.

     To filter out the CSI info you wnat, you need to add your sender device's MAC address in this list.

       static const char peer_mac_list[8][20] = {
           "3c:61:05:4c:36:cd", // esp32 official dev board 0, as soft ap, current device
           "xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx", // mac address(es) of any other peer device you want to collect CSI from.
       };

  2. Create some clients that send packets the AP periodically. You can flash the program in './udp_client' to other ESP32 boards. (The tool can support multiple clients.)
  3. Connect your computer to the ESP32 WiFi network. Run './active_ap/host_processing_pyqt.py'. You need to change the IP address of your computer accoding to the assigned IP from AP.

     UDP_IP = "192.168.4.2" # put your computer's ip in WiFi netowrk here

• To use ESP32 as an active client and colelct CSI data from AP's reply to the ping packets.

  1. Flash the program in './active_client' to one ESP32 board. Similar to above, configs need to be updated.
  2. Connect your computer to the WiFi network. Run './active_ap/host_processing_pyqt.py'. You need to change the IP address of your computer accoding to the assigned IP from AP.

       UDP_IP = "192.168.4.2" # put your computer's ip in WiFi netowrk here

• To use motion detection feature. change 'DETECTION_ON = True' in './active_ap/host_processing_pyqt.py'.

A more verbose desciption

TODO

Demo

Two demos are recorded for this project.

Demo1: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1r2jrBMXIeLWo95vzawv2DjRA__pLqYqz/view?usp=sharing

Demo2: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ACuFZxcK0tmpH7qY5npmv0mJ1KDCvLjI/view?usp=sharing