Hi guys, I'm using WiFi fingerprinting on an IoT tracking project and I'd like to reduce the power usage.
Currently my project uses an ESP8266 to:
1. Scan for local WiFi networks and read the BSSIDs.
2. Transmit the BSSIDs to my cloud server using LoRaWAN, Sigfox or NB-IoT.
3. My server queries Google's Geolocation API with the BSSIDs to obtain the location of the sensor.
I don't use GPS is because there is no signal where my tracker spends the majority of its life.
Unfortunately the ESP8266:
-is an absolute power hog,
-takes a while to start up,
-drains large current spikes on boot to calibrate its Rf circuits.
I feel the ESP8266 is way too complicated for sniffing a few frames and I was wondering if there's a way to use a 2.4GHz Rx-Only IC to read the raw WiFi data and then I could just decode the beacon frames. If so, can anyone recommend a chip that would be suitable or other plan of attack?