WiFi connect problem and fix
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I have been setting up a new (Ultibots D300VS) printer with a DuetWiFi board and I have had a very difficult time with the WiFi connection to my router. Even though the network name and password were set correctly, I usually could not get the Duet board to connect (but sometimes it would). It would just keep coming up in "access point" mode and my network would rarely appear in the list of available networks (but sometimes it would). All of my neighbors networks always showed up just fine.
My wifi/router is a Linksys/Cisco E4200 dual band which has been running without issues for several years. After some poking around in the settings I found one change that made a huge difference. My 2.4ghz band had the channel set to "AUTO" and since I changed it to use "channel 6", I have gotten a connection first try every time. I don't know enough about wifi networks to explain why this fixed the problem but I wanted to pass this information on.
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Hi tj
Thanks for the information. I guess that one of your neighbours networks was on the same channel as the router was choosing automatically, setting it to a free channel fixed the problem.
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Another possibility is that your router is hopping channel to avoid congestion, and the WiFi module is failing to connect on some channels. AFAIK the module in the Duet WiFi will work as a client on all 2.4GHz channels, but I'm wondering whether this might not be the case. I'll do some tests.
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Just to clarify two things…
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I chased this problem over a period of about five days, with many power cycles on both the network hardware and the DuetWiFi board. The problem was persistent and repeatable although some days seemed worse than others.
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I did not go through a list of channels to find one that worked. Channel 6 was the first one that I tried, and it worked.
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Another possibility is that your router is hopping channel to avoid congestion, and the WiFi module is failing to connect on some channels. AFAIK the module in the Duet WiFi will work as a client on all 2.4GHz channels, but I'm wondering whether this might not be the case. I'll do some tests.
I have had a lot of problems with ajax timeouts (especially in 1.19betaX). Yesterday I had a look at the access point I have in the same room as the duet wifi. It was locked to channel 1. I changed it to AUTO and got channel 6. After that I did not get a single timeout that evening. It could be that there were interferens on channel 1 (but as afar I can tell no other device had any problem) or it might be that the duets wifi module have problem with some channels?
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Hi,
Do you have other access points on channel 1?
In the US there are only three non-overlapping channels 1, 6 and 11.
You generally do not want more than one access point per channel but that can be tricky sometimes in large homes.
Some access points have a feature where they can scan for activity on the all of channels and report what they found.
Frederick
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Hi,
Do you have other access points on channel 1?
In the US there are only three non-overlapping channels 1, 6 and 11.
You generally do not want more than one access point per channel but that can be tricky sometimes in large homes.
Some access points have a feature where they can scan for activity on the all of channels and report what they found.
Frederick
This is the only ap I have, the main router was on another channel. I do live in a apartment and everyone have wifi nets so its hard to know what channels they are using. I did some scanning a year or three back when I decided to use channel 1 for this AP…
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Hi,
Apartments can be tough.
For situations like that it would be grand if the Duet supported the 5GHz band - many more channels.
If you cannot keep it working perhaps you could swap it for the Ethernet version.
With that you could use a hardwired connection OR a pair of external 5GHz access point devices (one in client mode).
Good luck.
Frederick
