Duet Wifi Bricking During Print
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Hello,
I've been having some odd issues with my duet Wifi - curious if anyone here knows what's going on.
So a little history here - This duet is probably a year or so old. I originally had it in another machine where the Wifi antenna was sticking out of a metal enclosure. It did fine for the first month or so, but then starting having problems where I believe the wifi was overheating. The wifi chip was getting VERY hot (finger burning levels to the touch), and the blue light would go out. When the system rebooted, the light wouldn't come back on. If I left it off for a half hour or so, everything would work again. I discovered that I could prolong the time before overheating by attaching a WiFi fan to the unit, but it didn't really fix the problem. So I bought an Ethernet and Wifi range extender and things are working well there.
I took the older Wifi and plugged it into a kossel build. Worked great for a few prints, but then has been randomly bricking when printing. The first time it did it, it was about an hour and 1/2 into the print. The second time, just 10-15 minutes. When it bricks, there were 3 lights on, red, blue and green next to each other. Duet web connection was unresponsive, and the unit didn't move or respond to anything. Unfortunately on this build, I do not have a panel-due attached.
Anyone have any ideas? I have the wifi card cooled with a fan, but it is right next to the 80/20 bars, so not ideal. I'm trying another print right now with a bit better fan flow over the wifi and duet card now.
Here's the relevant software I'm running:
Firmware Name:
RepRapFirmware for Duet WiFi
Firmware Electronics:
Duet WiFi 1.0
Firmware Version:
1.20 (2017-12-23)
WiFi Server Version:
1.21RC5(16b1)
Web Interface Version:
1.21.2-dc42 -
The WiFi module runs warm when connected to an access point, but it should not get hot. So I suggest you get the WiFi module replaced. If you want to do it yourself, to remove the old one you will need either hot air desoldering equipment or low melting point solder suich as ChipQuik. Then clean up the pads using solder wick, and solder on the new one.
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I have the hot air desoldering equipment and I'll go ahead and order a new wifi module. To your point, I'm pretty sure I'm either hitting a thermal limit of the wifi chip and some failsafe is occurring - or simply overheating the chip to the point where it stops working.
I had a similar problem on the wifi unit before this one (~2 years ago). There is a lot of wifi noise in my neighborhood - I'm curious if that is causing the wifi module to fail earlier than it is supposed to. The metal right next to the wifi antenna in both situations probably doesn't help either.
