On the topic of my push-button, BLE-enabled ignition system ... I've received all of the above stuff I ordered from Amazon, and started messing with coding and uploading said code to the ESP32. I've got it working pretty well so far, so I'll go ahead and order a few more bits to create an actual test, rather than just some serial output on the screen.
But, here's what I've done so far;
- Taken the MAC from the Innway card and hard-coded it into my ESP32 code
- Installed Ardiuno IDE and all the necessary libraries/modules to get it talking to my particular ESP32 board
- Taught myself enough, and looked up enough examples, to create some functional code
- Moved my BLE beacon around enough to test said code
Seems to work pretty well. Once I get some more stuff like a breadboard, some wires, and some resistors/LED's, I'll create a more practical test. But for now, a quick couple of screen grabs.
What you're seeing is the code on the ESP32 looping. Every loop consists of the ESP32 scanning all available Bluetooth/BLE MAC's, until it finds one that matches my hard-coded beacon MAC or until 30 seconds pass, whichever occurs first. Once the loop completes, the ESP32 writes a string via serial to show that a loop has completed, and a quick enumeration to express how many different Bluetooth/BLE MAC's it detected during that loop, even if they are not matches. If a detected MAC matches my hard-coded MAC, it exits the loop immediately and displays notice of a match, and the RSSI (signal strength) of the matched MAC, with "lower" negative numbers indicating a stronger signal.
In the first screenshot, you're seeing the output while the BLE beacon was out of range, then more while I slowly went and moved it to within range.
Then in the second screenshot, you're seeing the output while the BLE beacon is sitting right next to the ESP32.
Pretty good proof-of-concept, at least?