Not something I’ve had any trouble with. I have 3, one of which is in the garage where sometimes Pi3’s struggle to establish a wifi connection, let alone maintain one without dropouts.
No there’s no where to manually enter an IP, but I rarely use that method, reserved IP’s work just as well as static IP’s in most instances.
Sure I’ll look out some code, I’ll start another thread when I do.
TBH Brian I half expected you to suggest using a sonoff (and tasmota?) as I know you are a fan.
I have a couple of their early wifi switches but no experience of this particular device.