All,
I hope you can help me with a connectivity issue that is driving me crazy.
I'm a long time Argon device user. I have a device 100ft from my house monitoring temperature of a green house. It's been rock solid with no connectivity issues. I literally set it and forget it.
I purchased 4 new Photon 2 devices and I've had nothing but connectivity issues. My house has 30 or more wifi devices, and I don't have any wifi issues. My motorola wifi router connects to two tplink access points, so plenty of signal strength.
My issue: Using the simplest of code (LED blink), I see disconnects from the cloud, after 5-10min, and then it will either recover wifi, or halt at a solid green.
Just to be sure: Your external antenna is dual-band 2.4GHz/5 GHz, correct? Since the Argon uses 2.4 GHz if you use an Argon antenna it will have very poor connectivity because the Argon antenna doesn't support 5 GHz since the Argon doesn't, but the Photon 2 will use 5 GHz if available.
A solid green should never occur in normal operation, but an investigating is ongoing to that occurring on the M-SoM when using Wi-Fi with poor connectivity. It's possible that it could also occur on the P2/Photon 2 as they share a nearly identical MCU and Wi-Fi code.
Yes, I purchased the external antenna for the photon 2, just to help rule out wifi strength issues. Note, even with the embedded antenna, I saw great wifi strength.
I may try the pre-release 6.2 as it looks like it has photon 2 supported, and there is a "system thread (enabled)" by default, better "delay behavior", and "Adds detailed WiFi access point disconnect reason logging"
I have a third Photon 2 running on 5ghz with this code:
// Include Particle Device OS APIs
#include "Particle.h"
// Let Device OS manage the connection to the Particle Cloud
SYSTEM_MODE(AUTOMATIC);
// Show system, cloud connectivity, and application logs over USB
// View logs with CLI using 'particle serial monitor --follow'
SerialLogHandler logHandler(LOG_LEVEL_INFO);
unsigned long wifiConnectedTime = 0;
unsigned long lastCheckTime = 0;
// setup() runs once, when the device is first turned on
void setup() {
// Put initialization like pinMode and begin functions here
// Start serial communication at 9600 baud
Serial.begin(9600);
}
// loop() runs over and over again, as quickly as it can execute.
void loop() {
// The core of your code will likely live here.
// Measure Uptime
if (WiFi.ready()) {
if (wifiConnectedTime == 0) {
wifiConnectedTime = millis();
}
} else {
wifiConnectedTime = 0;
}
if (millis() - lastCheckTime >= 30000) { //check every 30 seconds
lastCheckTime = millis();
if (wifiConnectedTime > 0) {
unsigned long uptimeMillis = millis() - wifiConnectedTime;
unsigned long uptimeSeconds = uptimeMillis / 1000;
unsigned long uptimeMinutes = uptimeSeconds / 60;
unsigned long uptimeHours = uptimeMinutes / 60;
int rssi = WiFi.RSSI();
Serial.print("Wi-Fi Uptime: ");
Serial.print(uptimeHours);
Serial.print(" hours, ");
Serial.print(uptimeMinutes);
Serial.print(" minutes, ");
Serial.print(uptimeSeconds);
Serial.println(" seconds");
String uptimeString = String(uptimeHours) + "h " + String(uptimeMinutes) + "m " + String(uptimeSeconds) + "s";
Particle.publish("wifiUptime", uptimeString, PRIVATE);
Particle.publish("wifiSignalStrength", String(rssi), PRIVATE);
} else {
Serial.println("Wi-Fi not connected");
}
}
}
You should not mix Serial.print and logging, as it can cause the device to crash because Serial.print is not thread-safe and the system logs to SerialLogHandler from the system thread.
See this note for more information. Also, it will make your logging much simpler if you use Log.info because you can combine all of that into a single line using printf formatting.
Ok, I updated code: no serial, and system thread enabled, and semi automatic:
// Include Particle Device OS APIs
#include "Particle.h"
SYSTEM_THREAD(ENABLED);
SYSTEM_MODE(SEMI_AUTOMATIC);
SerialLogHandler logHandler;
// Select the external antenna
STARTUP(WiFi.selectAntenna(ANT_EXTERNAL));
unsigned long wifiConnectedTime = 0;
unsigned long lastCheckTime = 0;
// setup() runs once, when the device is first turned on
void setup() {
// Put initialization like pinMode and begin functions here
Particle.connect();
}
// loop() runs over and over again, as quickly as it can execute.
void loop() {
// The core of your code will likely live here.
// Measure Uptime
if (WiFi.ready()) {
if (wifiConnectedTime == 0) {
wifiConnectedTime = millis();
}
} else {
wifiConnectedTime = 0;
}
if (millis() - lastCheckTime >= 30000) { //check every 30 seconds
lastCheckTime = millis();
if (wifiConnectedTime > 0) {
unsigned long uptimeMillis = millis() - wifiConnectedTime;
unsigned long uptimeSeconds = uptimeMillis / 1000;
unsigned long uptimeMinutes = uptimeSeconds / 60;
unsigned long uptimeHours = uptimeMinutes / 60;
int rssi = WiFi.RSSI();
String uptimeString = String(uptimeHours) + "h " + String(uptimeMinutes) + "m " + String(uptimeSeconds) + "s";
Particle.publish("wifiUptime", uptimeString, PRIVATE);
Particle.publish("wifiSignalStrength", String(rssi), PRIVATE);
}
}
}
4 devices uploaded with this code.
1 with 5ghz, no antenna
2 at 2.4ghz, with ext antenna
1 with 2.4ghz, no antenna
All running 5.9
I'll see if I can get these to remain online with no lock up with solid green LED.
Meanwhile, Argon just keeps on running 100ft away from house (with Particle IO 2.4ghz ext antenna).
I've seen similar-ish wifi connectivity issues on 5.8.0-6.2.0. Though it seems as if it may be a little better on 6.2.0, I still see frequent disconnects. In the past 6 days I've seen 233 cloud re connections (at least going off of spark/status: online).
correct - I have two sketches... one with the antenna ext, and one without. I'm getting these failures with great wifi strength and obviously all the wifi devices in my house are rock solid (thermostat, garage door opener, argon device, rokus, etc... )
Jettonj, Yes, I've seen your posts here about connectivity issues. I do think it's similar. I'm still learning about logs. How do I get this log output? Also, I can deal with some disconnects, but it's the lock up with SOLID GREEN that makes this a no go. I can't deploy these and have them lock up.
Using the simple code above, I had a failure due to lockup with GREEN LED in about 1.5 hours, the other 3 are still functioning, but disconnect easily every 10min, but manage to reconnect.
that might create some trouble, because the antenna setting is kind of permanent, so if you ran firmware that set the antenna to external and now remove that statement, the external antenna setting is still there.
I suggest you avoid potential trouble by setting the proper antenna (internal and then external) on BOTH sketches.
For the devices that have connected, you just need to press the Last vitals button in the console for that device, then view the event data that comes in (if it's currently online)
