> Also, why make the ESP32 the the hotspot? Why not just connect to the same network? Then you're not really range limited.
Because then they don't have to include the ability to configure wifi, which (while not that hard) is one more thing to do and for a hackathon that's not really contributing to the end goal.
I couldn't get on WiFi at the office at all. Corporate WiFi had a bunch of hoops to jump through that made ESP32 hard.
Once I got it working it felt really cool though. As a user I don't want to configure WiFi on the microcontroller at all. I would be really cool if I could walk up to a 'smart device' and set my phone next to it and do zero configuration.
Hah, that doesn't surprise me either. You're really hoping for guest WiFi in that situation.
That makes a lot more sense now. Thanks