I had previously bought one of those little usb wifi nubs for this, but apparently on Mac it’s not a thing to run two Wifi connections at once. I’m going by memory here, which is not to be trusted, but I seem to remember trying thoroughly several months ago, and could not make it work.
Did I see a mismatch of channels along the way here? Your Extender is serving on channel ‘2’ and the jackpot is channel ‘1’? Or did I misread this?
It seems like they’re just not communicating at all, which could be a channel mismatch thing.
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I could see how it might look that way, but:
The above is my extender. The below is the FluidNC AP (the fallback mode).
This only means the AP mode is on a different channel than my extender.
Sadly, I don’t think this info helps get connected.
I wonder if in STA mode it’s also using a narrow channel that the extender isn’t on. These radios simply are ships passing in the night (not connecting). I’ve seen this with iOT types of things that I have that just won’t seem to connect unless it’s the third thursday of next week.
If you have a big enough network junk box, I’d try to connect with another router (I know your home one didn’t work out months ago). something that’s broadcasting on all channels, and really dumb, and not wifi 6 super duperness.
My own equipment is a ubiquiti AP, located on the other side of the literal firewall of my garage, and signal goes through my HVAC equipment. So, unless you’ve got a faulty esp32, this should be working in your situation.
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@williamaadams Thanks for the help efforts.
According to the FluidNC command ( $Wifi/ListAPs ) it can see the extender at 100% strength. If it was looking on a wrong channel it would not see it. Whatever is wrong, I don’t think it’s a channel mismatch.
the fact the board can see the access point is promising, at least the radios are communicating. The one thing that happens next to get a connection is negotiating the handshake. for that, the WPA2-PSK things have to match, and the encryption type (TKIP, or AES) need to match as well.
And final Columbo question, Are you absolutely SURE the password to the access point is correct in your config…
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One can always doubt and double check.
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Well, the underlying BSD Unix OS can do it… but this isn’t the first time that Mac OS won’t let you do stuff the underlying Unix is perfectly happy to do. 
too bad, it was a cheap solution for me.
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I just received a 6pack board (also fluidnc), and installed it on my network. My house has wifi access points, of varying degrees of age, but all ubiquiti. There is an access point just on the other side of the wall from my office where I powered up the board.
The 6 pack did not connect to that access point. Instead, it went for the one that’s down in the basement, the same one my jackpot board in the garage connects to.
It could have gone for the one upstairs, which is more of a clear path, but not, it went for this one.
The info on it is:
Channel 1 (2.4 GHz, 20MHz)
WiFi 4
MIMO Configuration: 1x1
So, I’m really thinking your extender is either too smart, or too dumb for its own good. I’d try with a standard wifi router thing to test all these assumptions. If that works, then we know it’s the extender.
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