have to powercycle on router change (same SSID/pass)?

Product support balenaOS
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1

hi, if the router that the raspi 0w connects to is offline for a while or if it has been substituted by another one with the same credentials, the raspi does a slow blink and no longer connects to the internet nor is available locally. it needs to be powercycled. is there a way to have it try the connection without caching whatever it probably is? thanks, m

2

Hi @mahesh1, what’s the balenaOS version running on this device? Could you please share NetworkManager logs with us?

We use NetworkManager to manage device connectivity. Here are the relevant docs that provide details about it: https://www.balena.io/docs/reference/OS/network/2.x/#introduction

For your issue: Is it expected that the device has multiple wifi access points? And do I get it right that multiple access points share the same wifi name and credentials?

In case of unreliable wifi access points, I found couple of nice workarounds on this thread: Unreliable wifi connection

Could you try these and let us know how it goes?
Essentially you could instruct your application to check for wifi connection and reset the NetworkManager

If you provide us logs, we could investigate further to see if it’s an issue we could fix on our end.

4

hi gelbal, i’m running balena HOST OS VERSION balenaOS 2.32.0+rev1 and SUPERVISOR VERSION 9.14.0 on a pi0 (raspberry pi zero).
in our network, the pi0 has a static IP address. there can be more than one AP with the same SSID/password. and there can also be repeaters with the same AP name & password. WiFi can be unreliable and become unavailable for days at a time.

i looked at the workarounds but it’s a bit beyond me. is there a simple “WiFi reconnect” script that can be part of the application?

What kind of logs would you like? i can try disconnecting WiFi routers for several hours and try to replicate the problem.

thanks!

5

Hi, let’s first see whether how easily reproducible.

I see your OS version is a bit old - it is best to test with latest released (v2.46.1 for RPi Zero W).

Can you please provision a device without pushing any application to it and configure its WiFi? Then power off the first router, wait a couple of hours and power on the second one like you described.

The more we know about how to reproduce that, the easiest will be to find a solution or at least a workaround for this.

Thanks,
Zahari

8

hi, do you want me to test a plain-vanilla development install, v2.46.1 for RPi Zero W? i think i took the router offline last night and restarted it this AM. the rpi0 was able to connect after a while. i didn’t need to reboot it. i’ll do some other tests. thanks.

10

Hi, yes, this is the setup I had in mind, yes. Let’s see whether you will be able to reproduce with the latest OS version. Could be an issue that only exists in some previous versions of the OS.
Thanks,
Zahari

12

Hello, were you able to test my colleagues suggestions?

14

hi, sorry for the delay. we’re understaffed at the moment so IoT gateway development is in a holding pattern. i’ll get back to this when i get a chance. thanks for checking in! best, mahesh