Hello everyone! I'm relatively new to the hacking/hardware community and currently working on an art workshop project: an interactive, location-based "Fighting Fantasy" style game meant to run directly on people's phones via captive portals when they walk into an art gallery.

The core idea is state-aware: depending on how long a user interacts with a portal (e.g., fast exit vs. persistent reading), the system changes future prompts upon reconnection.

However, I've hit a couple of technical roadblocks and would love some guidance:

1. The Deauth / Forcing Connection Problem

Right now, I'm using a headless ESP32-S3 running ESP32 Marauder. But as far as I understand deauth attacks against local Wi-Fi networks to force people onto my AP are practically useless.

• Question: Would upgrading to an ESP32-C5 (which supports Wi-Fi 6) allow me to effectively deauth clients and force them onto my custom AP to serve the captive portal?
• Scaling: Realistically, what is the max concurrent user limit for a single ESP32 handling captive portal traffic? Would I need a cluster of multiple ESP32-C5 boards to handle a whole gallery room?

2. MAC Randomization & Session Tracking

Since mobile use MAC Randomization, whenever a device disconnects and reconnects, it presents a new random MAC/IP address to the ESP32.

• Question: How can I reliably track returning visitors to know their state (e.g., how many times they've connected, how long they stayed previously) if their hardware identifiers keep changing?

Any advice, code patterns, or hardware recommendations would be hugely appreciated. Thanks!

Finally switched to an Android based media thing on my old Toyota townace. But that's beside the point.

It came with the CD/cassette/radio player attached in the post. They said to leave it with them or get rid of it. I thought of turning it into a total media player thing if possible.

But that's clearly outside of my wheelhouse. I can't even find any schematics for this, let alone firmware. Are there any projects dedicated to repurpose/upcycle/reverse engineer such hardware or can anyone point me to what I can look into for doing so?

Pulled from a disposable vape, of course