@mdma (@MORA), I will post to you an unpopulated PCB to enable you to reproduce the fault.
All you need to do to reproduce the issue is sit the Photon on the board (have covered the pads with sticky tape so as to allow you to do this without shorting the module).
I have the Particle address as
320 Alabama Street # 2
San Francisco, CA 94110
United States
Let me know if this is not the case.
I think there will be numbers of people who will appreciate this issue being resolved!
We have developed a PCB (different to the original one mentioned at the start of this ticket) that we solder the Photon module to.
Have come up to the same problem as first outlined in this ticket which is that mobile devices (HTC ONE and iPad) cannot connect to the Photon in SoftAP mode.
The mobile WiFi connection process displays the following:
Connecting...
Saved
Connecting...
Avoided poor internet connection
The IP address was "unavailable"
On an iPad, WiFi connection displays:
"Security Recommendation"
"No Internet Connection"
The IP Address allocated was 169.254.193.5, in other words it did not obtain an address from the Photon otherwise it would have been on the 192.168.0 subnet.
Am hoping that this is something that can be fixed in firmware....
@ScruffR, I can report that a Photon module with headers sitting on a prototyping bread board works fine with SoftAP (Android mobile and iPad) , whereas soldered to my PCB doesn’t.
So there seems to be some subtle ** hardware issue **, most likely the radio because signal strength is excellent, but DHCP is not working when sitting or soldered to PCB.
Am going to enable the new logger functionality so that we may trace the system messages within setup() and compare a good outcome with a bad. Back soon!
@UMD, @ScruffR, We had identical issue with surface mounted Photon. You need to remove ground loops on the board which somehow interact with the wifi module making the DHCP not working. I will post our board design for inspiration.
I doubt that’s fixable via firmware, but @BDub might know better.
I’ve got a Photon that just doesn’t like connecting - it always takes ages no matter what FW or system. I’ve even swapped chip antennas between two devices, but the stubbord device was just as stubborn and the good one just as good.
No clue what’s wrong with the one
STARTUP(WiFi.selectAntenna(ANT_AUTO)); // continually switches at high speed between antennas
The problems started popping up after particle changed the default to ANT_INTERNAL, so in some cases changing back to AUTO allows your board to be used.
And since you can set a static IP and allow the softAP process to complete, while the board runs perfectly for months on end, its obviously something than can be fixed or improved in software, but not much interest from particle in the matter.
I shipped a board to norway as requested so they had a sample of a board which showed the problems, but never heard back
Would love an update to this issue, we have installed 100s of the older photons (with 4 random letters in the softAP instead of 6) no problem. Now we have just made 200 more, exactly the same circuit, but now getting “couldn’t get IP address” issues!!! Please help, this is really bad for us.
Clearly an update to firmware caused this, specifically changing the startup antenna to internal.
@Dan.s, are you using an external or internal antenna? If internal, try an external one and report back (of course setting WiFi.selectAntenna() appropriately).
I have not touched SoftAP since way back then, now much preferring to use USB serial configuration.
Message appears similar to the exact way everyone else has experienced in this thread - that’s why I’m responding to this one instead of creating a new thread!
The previous working version was 0.6.3 where the softAP had 4 random letters in it after “Photon-”, whilst the new version has 6 letters. I don’t have one of the new ones in front of me so cannot say specifically which version it comes with, I think it was v0.8.0 which first introduced this.
@UMD yes we use an external antenna on all our units, and our firmware has the appropriate startup command to select it. However our firmware only gets installed once it is connected online! It is fine once this happens.
The factory installed firmware really ought to allow both onboard and external antenna by default. What was wrong with leaving it as STARTUP(WiFi.selectAntenna(ANT_AUTO)) ?
USB serial configuration is a no-go as it is a customer facing product.