Thanks again Karl. REALLY appreciate the help. I did notice the other day that /home/pi/pibeacon/ipAddress was reflecting the eth0 address on the pi's, and not the wlan0 even when I've configured it as you suggested.
I also noticed that, so far, it seems my pi 3B+ is working well, though my pi 3B's don't seem to be reporting on my XY devices. Currently, I'm only using this with XY beacons, though I may play with other beacons later down the road. I remember your matrix of what works with what hardware, etc, but of course didn't commit it to memory. So, for my config, what setup has proven the most successful for the pi 3B's? Should i use the BLE dongles, or remove them? set it up to specify when to use the external dongle, or leave it to let pibeacon decide for both BLE and beacon? I defaulted to deploying /home/pi/pibeacon via the plugin, so i'm using the most current files as I'd installed the latest plugin from the plugin store, and then the one you sent me.
let me know, as that may be causing some of the confusion/conflicts, etc. And, as always, happy to be a guinea pig as needed, so feel free if you need an env to test.
~ken