Building an open-source Wi-Fi Mac layer for the ESP32

Building an open-source Wi-Fi MAC layer for the ESP32 The ESP32 is a low-cost microcontroller with Wi-Fi connectivity. Currently, the Wi-Fi MAC layer of the ESP32 is closed-source. This project aims to change that: by reverse engineering the hardware registers and software, we can build a networking stack that is open-source up to the hardware, instead of having to use the proprietary MAC layer. This will improve security auditability, open up the possibility for features not supported in the proprietary implementation (for example, standards-compliant mesh networking), improve interoperability and make research into Wi-Fi networks with lots of nodes more affordable. The source code is under the esp32-open-mac organisation on GitHub. There are currently two implementations: esp32-open-mac (we know it's confusing that one reference implementation has the same name as the overarching project, but bear with us) This is a reference implementation that demonstrates how the hardware work ... Read full article.