Intermittent WiFi Connection at Startup

[tfjield]

@phaedrux
It came with my Modix printer. I received it about 2 weeks ago. It was shipped with the other parts direct from China.

[Phaedrux]

Do you have another spare access point to test with? It would be good to isolate the issue before we go through the trouble of warranty replacement incase that won't actually solve the issue.

[tfjield]

@phaedrux
I do. It had the same problem with the AP in the house, so I thought maybe it needed a higher signal strength, so I put a new AP close to it. (The strength was good already, but I didn't want to be blasting everything else indoors if it needed more.) But I can crank up the indoor power temporarily and try connecting to that one again (different SSID's, so that's easy) to see if it makes a difference.

I can't do this until Monday, though. I'm sitting in a plane just about to take off! ️

[oliof]

@tfjield is that still another Unifi AP, or some other make/model?

[tfjield]

@oliof It's Unifi. The current is model UAP, and the other one I can test is U6-LR.

[tfjield]

@oliof @Phaedrux
I may have found something. On a hunch, I decided to replace the SD card with a faster one, thinking that there might be some kind of race condition occurring during startup.

The card that came with it is a SanDisk Edge 8 GB class 4. Here's a stock image of the card:

I replaced it with a SanDisk Ultra.

With the original card it would boot and connect to WiFi no more than half the time. After replacing the card, it's connected 5 out of 5 reboots. I'll continue testing, but it seems much better!

EDIT: This is on the same AP; I've only changed the card.

[Exerqtor]

@tfjield Interesting, keep us updated on this please 😅

[tfjield]

@exerqtor
With the new card I've rebooted about 18 times so far, and it's only failed twice. Looks like a significant improvement, but not 100%.

To be completely sure it's not something else, I'll swap the old card back in later and see what happens.

[tfjield]

Well, it turns out that this was not the fix. As time went on, the number of times it would fail vs. the number of times that it would succeed has increased a lot. We're back to 50/50 or greater failure rate.

To this day, once the WiFi is connected I have never lost connection.

I suppose this could be a hardware problem, but it sure seems more like some kind of race condition. Is there anything I can do to help determine the root cause for the failure?

[Phaedrux]

Can you snag a close up pic of the soldering on the wifi module?

[tfjield]

@phaedrux
These aren't great... Is there something specific you're looking for? If so, I can try to highlight it better. And these were with a cell phone camera... If these aren't good enough, I can pull out the USB microscope.

[Phaedrux]

Thanks for the photos. I will pass them on for evaluation.

[Phaedrux]

I don't suppose you could get some better photos? Might have to take the board out.

[tfjield]

@phaedrux Sure, I can get better photos. Anything in particular I should try to capture? Are you looking for a cold solder joint? Perhaps it would be better if I viewed it from a 45° angle...

[tfjield]

@phaedrux Here are some better pictures. I tried to image near the pads on the bottom.

That's about the best I can do.

[Phaedrux]

Thanks I'll pass those along.

[dc42]

@tfjield thanks for the photos.

I think the soldering is OK. The WiFi modules have gold plated recesses on the sides - see photo below. The solder appears to have wicked up int those recesses, so it should be making good contact.

[Exerqtor]

@dc42

Haven't restarted my machine in a while, but i had to now due to some maintenance. And when i try to turn it back on it's doing this crap again

I'm on my 16th power toggle now without it connecting / starting the wifi module or what the F's actually going on.

It must be something fishy on the FW side causing this since it's happening on/off like it is, were it an HW issue the fault should persist shouldn't it?

EDIT:
To be clear since i forgot to mention it, i'm running all the latest FW (3.4.4).

[Phaedrux]

@Exerqtor What do the solder points on the edges of the wifi module look like on your board?

If you use a PanelDue or USB terminal, can you send the M552 S1 commands to enable the module and see if it reports any errors?

[Exerqtor]

@Phaedrux said in Intermittent WiFi Connection at Startup:

@Exerqtor What do the solder points on the edges of the wifi module look like on your board?

Pretty much a carbon copy of tfjield's ones. So i don't think it's a HW issue tbh.

If you use a PanelDue or USB terminal, can you send the M552 S1 commands to enable the module and see if it reports any errors?

Yeah i've got a due, but nothing happen if i just input M552 S1. This is the error i get if i restart the module or machine at least:

EDIT;
Have you found a solution or work-arround for this @tfjield? Or have you just also had the machine in a steady on-state the last 4 months? 😅