Get ESP32 Chip ID into a string variable (Arduino/C++ newbie here) It's just a few days since I started using Arduino IDE ( programming an ESP32 ). As I learn, I am trying to write some snippets. I wanted to store the Chip ID of ESP32 into a variable (preferably string?) so that I can generate an unique device name. I looked through the ESP32 example programs and came across this program which just prints the Chip ID to the serial console.

  uint64_t chipid;

  chipid = ESP.getEfuseMac(); //The chip ID is essentially its MAC address(length: 6 bytes).
  Serial.printf("ESP32 Chip ID = %04X", (uint16_t)(chipid &gt;&gt; 32)); //print High 2 bytes
  Serial.printf("%08X\n", (uint32_t)chipid); //print Low 4bytes.


Now this works fine but I needed to store it into a variable in the following format "ESP32-0A1B3C4D5E6F" ( the last part of which is the Chip/MAC ID which is 6 bytes ). I went about some reading and currently reading and managed to get this far

  char ssid1[15];
  char ssid2[15];

  uint64_t chipid = ESP.getEfuseMac(); // The chip ID is essentially its MAC address(length: 6 bytes).
  uint16_t chip = (uint16_t)(chipid &gt;&gt; 32);

  snprintf(ssid1, 15, "%04X", chip);
  snprintf(ssid2, 15, "%08X", (uint32_t)chipid);

  Serial.print(ssid1);
  Serial.println(ssid2);


I am trying to read this which seems to be an excellent article on handling Arduino strings but just being a few days old with Arduino/c++ I am having some difficulty in wrapping my head around some of the concepts. I come from a Python, PHP, Javascript background so I guess this is gona take a little bit of a time. I am getting the output that I want in the serial console but now I would need this in this format (MCUDEVICE-0A1B3C4D5E6F). I am sure this code can be written in a much nicer, cleaner manner but for now I need this to proceed with another snippet (which relies on device name in the above mentioned format). Can anyone provide some pointers while I try check out the different ways I could achieve this? I just want to be sure that I am not writing ugly (and dangerous code - crashes, buffer overruns etc). Greatly appreciate any pointers. I guess I am starting to get a little paranoid about handling strings ( especially on low memory devices like typical mcus ).
You can combine all your work into one single line with the snprintf. You aren't limited to just one variable, and you can add plain text:

char ssid[23];

snprintf(ssid, 23, "MCUDEVICE-%04X%08X", chip, (uint32_t)chipid);