Mini 5+ Wifi connection unstable

oc_geek

I would like to report that something around the WiFi connection of the Mini 5+ does not line up...

I'm now running the latest 3.3RC3, but these are dragging from past releases as well (i tried them all from 3.2.2 on during the time)

I experienced this same behaviors with three different cards and i believe it is worth investigating deeper (and no it is not related to Access point / the Wifi network etc... so please do not start that..) as my impression is that this is FW related

Symptoms i have experienced and would like to report back to you:

After e.g. a long night print (~10-12h) in the morning the printer is unreachable. Only way to reconnect is to power cycle
At some points (random have to say) the connection is lost and then reestablished without reason in few minutes
Rarely and absolutely random the message "Failed to get file list" comes up in the middle of the disconnects

Rest of the time the card works just fine...
though this erratic and unpredictable behavior ain't neither normal nor pleasant...

If it might help It appears (however i'm not 100% positive..) it exhibits when the printer is at rest (e.g. not printing)

and few minutes later

A 4h print finished and here we go again...it seems that it is at rest that this comes

and again....

M122 Dump 210614

Diamondback

I have similar issues on 3.3 RC3 with my Duet 2 Wifi, I've only had it once yet that the printer was unreachable, but in DWC I get momentary (~1s) disconnects fairly often.

Phaedrux

When those disconnects happen during a print, the print proceeds without issue?

@oc_geek said in Mini 5+ Wifi connection unstable:

Only way to reconnect is to power cycle

Have you tried sending M552 via USB or PanelDue to see what the status of the network is when it's unable to connect? And M552 S0 and M552 S1 to disable/enable again?

fcwilt

@oc_geek I have two printers running 3.2.2 on the same board and have not encountered the problem you are having.

Phaedrux

@oc_geek said in Mini 5+ Wifi connection unstable:

and no it is not related to Access point / the Wifi network etc... so please do not start that.

All the same, would you be able to test a different wifi channel?

Are you familiar with WireShark?

oc_geek

@phaedrux ..no
tbh this is loose of time investigation (as i wrote since start...)
My Wifi works perfectly fine and my modem already optimizes the channels

Unless you are aware of an issue on the card Wifi on a specific channel (which i'm not) this ain't that problem

Problem as already stated is when the printer is in idle state.
This again happen this morning after printing all night (and there were no connectivity issues by then)

The print lasted 8h, then It went to idle and the issue came up...
sometimes it is few connect/disconnect instances some other times it starts and end never ends + "files read issue"
... it is something in the FW i believe

dc42

@oc_geek have you tried going to Settings/Machine specific/General in DWC and increasing "Number of maximum AJAX retries" above its default value of 2 ?

Unless you are aware of an issue on the card Wifi on a specific channel (which i'm not) this ain't that problem

We have some evidence that low channel numbers (typically 1) are sometimes problematic. What works best also depends on what other devices use the 2.4GHz band, e.g. cordless phones and leaky microwave ovens.

How have you positioned the antenna of the Duet?

Diamondback

Here's my channel usage (green is the currently used one)

droftarts

@diamondback judging by the graph, you and @oc_geek appear to be using the same router? What is it? Can you also post the response to M122?

A wireshark trace will help, because it will show which end is causing the disconnections, and give us somewhere to start investigating. As we’re not experiencing these issues in our testing or setups, we’re reliant on users to do this. A directionless investigation will frustrate everyone.

Ian

Diamondback

@droftarts The UI is from Fritz! routers, in my specific case it's a Fritz!Box 7490.

M122

M122
=== Diagnostics ===
RepRapFirmware for Duet 2 WiFi/Ethernet version 3.3RC3 (2021-05-26 13:47:14) running on Duet WiFi 1.02 or later + DueX5
Board ID: 08DGM-917NK-F2MS4-7J9F2-3S86N-TYTWF
Used output buffers: 3 of 24 (24 max)
=== RTOS ===
Static ram: 23876
Dynamic ram: 80812 of which 268 recycled
Never used RAM 6604, free system stack 98 words
Tasks: NETWORK(ready,73.1%,227) ACCEL(notifyWait,0.0%,334) HEAT(delaying,1.1%,309) Move(notifyWait,9.6%,283) DUEX(notifyWait,0.0%,24) MAIN(running,15.8%,443) IDLE(ready,0.4%,29), total 100.0%
Owned mutexes: WiFi(NETWORK)
=== Platform ===
Last reset 13:22:58 ago, cause: software
Last software reset at 2021-06-14 21:54, reason: User, GCodes spinning, available RAM 6716, slot 2
Software reset code 0x0003 HFSR 0x00000000 CFSR 0x00000000 ICSR 0x0041f000 BFAR 0xe000ed38 SP 0x00000000 Task MAIN Freestk 0 n/a
Error status: 0x04
Aux0 errors 0,0,0
Step timer max interval 0
MCU temperature: min 28.3, current 33.2, max 41.4
Supply voltage: min 23.9, current 24.3, max 24.5, under voltage events: 0, over voltage events: 0, power good: yes
Heap OK, handles allocated/used 99/8, heap memory allocated/used/recyclable 2048/346/234, gc cycles 1
Driver 0: position 1600, standstill, SG min/max 0/1023
Driver 1: position 49280, standstill, SG min/max 0/1023
Driver 2: position 12733, standstill, SG min/max 0/529
Driver 3: position 24000, standstill, SG min/max 0/1023
Driver 4: position 0, standstill, SG min/max 0/1023
Driver 5: position 0, standstill, SG min/max not available
Driver 6: position 0, standstill, SG min/max not available
Driver 7: position 0, standstill, SG min/max 0/1023
Driver 8: position 0, standstill, SG min/max 0/1023
Driver 9: position 0, standstill, SG min/max 0/1023
Driver 10: position 0
Driver 11: position 0
Date/time: 2021-06-15 11:17:03
Cache data hit count 4294967295
Slowest loop: 215.02ms; fastest: 0.14ms
I2C nak errors 0, send timeouts 0, receive timeouts 0, finishTimeouts 0, resets 0
=== Storage ===
Free file entries: 10
SD card 0 detected, interface speed: 20.0MBytes/sec
SD card longest read time 1.4ms, write time 25.1ms, max retries 0
=== Move ===
DMs created 83, maxWait 26384846ms, bed compensation in use: mesh, comp offset 0.000
=== MainDDARing ===
Scheduled moves 262247, completed moves 262247, hiccups 0, stepErrors 0, LaErrors 0, Underruns [0, 0, 0], CDDA state -1
=== AuxDDARing ===
Scheduled moves 0, completed moves 0, hiccups 0, stepErrors 0, LaErrors 0, Underruns [0, 0, 0], CDDA state -1
=== Heat ===
Bed heaters = 0 -1 -1 -1, chamberHeaters = -1 -1 -1 -1
=== GCodes ===
Segments left: 0
Movement lock held by null
HTTP is idle in state(s) 0
Telnet is idle in state(s) 0
File is idle in state(s) 0
USB is idle in state(s) 0
Aux is idle in state(s) 0
Trigger is idle in state(s) 0
Queue is idle in state(s) 0
LCD is idle in state(s) 0
Daemon is idle in state(s) 0
Autopause is idle in state(s) 0
Code queue is empty.
=== DueX ===
Read count 5, 0.01 reads/min
=== Network ===
Slowest loop: 92.76ms; fastest: 0.00ms
Responder states: HTTP(0) HTTP(0) HTTP(0) HTTP(0) FTP(0) Telnet(0), 0 sessions
HTTP sessions: 1 of 8
- WiFi -
Network state is active
WiFi module is connected to access point 
Failed messages: pending 0, notready 0, noresp 0
WiFi firmware version 1.26
WiFi MAC address b4:e6:2d:52:f2:a9
WiFi Vcc 3.42, reset reason Power up
WiFi flash size 4194304, free heap 26536
WiFi IP address 192.168.1.31
WiFi signal strength -61dBm, mode 802.11n, reconnections 0, sleep mode modem
Clock register 00002002
Socket states: 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

(This is after a print and sitting idle for a while)

Please note that for me, these issues started appearing with one of the beta/RC versions of 3.3 (can't quite tell which, probably beta3 and later), never seen them before. The issue also happens very irregularly for me, haven't seen it the last two days, the day before it was happening constantly...

Haven't added any new devices to my network in the same timespan, no new external networks appeared, no new appliances (microwave etc).
Can't rule out some stuff getting an update and doing weird things of course (think google products)

oc_geek

@dc42

@dc42 said in Mini 5+ Wifi connection unstable:

@oc_geek have you tried going to Settings/Machine specific/General in DWC and increasing "Number of maximum AJAX retries" above its default value of 2 ?

Will try that suggestion. Now i set it to 4

Unless you are aware of an issue on the card Wifi on a specific channel (which i'm not) this ain't that problem

We have some evidence that low channel numbers (typically 1) are sometimes problematic. What works best also depends on what other devices use the 2.4GHz band, e.g. cordless phones and leaky microwave ovens.

That is ruled out (not using those spectrum areas)

How have you positioned the antenna of the Duet?

external to the printer

... folks we run in circles this way

It IS NOT a wifi issue.
Files trasfers are VERY fast
Is is something else related to the idle state

Diamondback

@oc_geek That doesn't mean it can't be something external... Could be a broken appliance, could be some phone that got recently updated, could be a rogue device etc.
Could also be a bad WiFi firmware on the Duet, but that's certainly not the only option.

oc_geek

@droftarts said in Mini 5+ Wifi connection unstable:

Can you also post the response to M122?

Mine was already attached in the original post

A wireshark trace will help, because it will show which end is causing the disconnections, and give us somewhere to start investigating. As we’re not experiencing these issues in our testing or setups, we’re reliant on users to do this. A directionless investigation will frustrate everyone.

Will try that as well... but i'm already guessing where it is happening...don't we ?

oc_geek

@diamondback said in Mini 5+ Wifi connection unstable:

@oc_geek That doesn't mean it can't be something external... Could be a broken appliance, could be some phone that got recently updated, could be a rogue device etc.
Could also be a bad WiFi firmware on the Duet, but that's certainly not the only option.

Sorry pale but after 3 replaced cards and this beeing the only device on my wireleass having issues....yes it is the only option

chrishamm

@diamondback @oc_geek I've always used my WiFi Duets with a FritzBox 6490 and I haven't seen any connection drops yet. Do you have your PC connected via Ethernet and do the same problems occur when DWC is connected from a different device (cell phone or tablet)? Does M122 report an increasing number of reconnects? If the number of reconnects remains 0, please try to connect to your Duet from a private browsing window to rule out potential interference from third-party addons.

If none of these points help, we'll need a Wireshark dump that contains the traffic between your PC and Duet. That should help us figure out what's going on.

droftarts

@oc_geek said in Mini 5+ Wifi connection unstable:

@droftarts said in Mini 5+ Wifi connection unstable:

@diamondback judging by the graph, you and @oc_geek appear to be using the same router? What is it? Can you also post the response to M122?

Mine was already attached in the original post

Yes, your M122 was. I was asking what router you had, as it appears to be the same as @Diamondback, judging by the graphic.

Ian

oc_geek

@droftarts said in Mini 5+ Wifi connection unstable:

I was asking what router you had

this

Diamondback

@chrishamm PC is connected to router via Ethernet, yes. When the issue starts appearing again I will try the things you mentioned.
Thanks for the help

oc_geek

@droftarts said in Mini 5+ Wifi connection unstable:
@chrishamm

A wireshark trace will help, because it will show which end is causing the disconnections, and give us somewhere to start investigating

Something like this when the event occurs is what you are looking for ?
(had to rename the file cse does not allow to upload otherwise, just remove .gcode extension....)

WS Capture test

tomasf

I've always had unstable Wi-Fi with Duet, ever since my first Duet Wifi, regardless of where I put the printer relative to the router and with different channels, router brands, etc. Then I switched to using an SBC and let the Raspberry Pi handle the Wi-Fi connection and it's been rock solid ever since.