Why is my Photon losing WiFi connectivty

I have a new Photon that was working well running a simple app reading data from Serial1 and writing it back. Nothing else. I moved the laptop and the Photon It was connected to into a new office in the next room. The laptop is showing a strong (5 bar) signal in the new office. Yet the Photon connected to the same network keeps losing connectivity to the network which halts the simple app. It doesn’t stay connected long enough to even over the air flash new code. I have to take it out of the office where it is having connectivity issues to flash new code.

The device has version 0.5.0 firmware on it. I thought these connectivity issues were fixed back in 0.4.5.

Any idea why it should losing connectivity when a strong signal exists? It was using the same WiFi network in the office where it ran for days with no loss of connectivity. So it is unclear why it should have problems in one office and not the other.

Unfortunately in the location this needs to be used, there is only one WiFi network available. The unit has the credentials for other networks in case we move it to other locations in the building.

Thoughts?

Are you sure you are connected to the same router where you are now and not a different one which just happens to have the same WiFi credentials?
When I scan the WiFi neighbourhood in my office I can see multiple APs with the same SSID but with different MAC addresses and quite different signal strengths and channels.

So try wiping the current credentials and just reenter them again at your new location.

@scruff Yes it is connected to the same router. There are 4 wireless routers in the office and each has a different SSID. So we are certain the laptop and Photon are connected to the same router in each of the two offices where we are trying this.

I have replaced the Photon with another one that had not been used before and added it to our account. It had a problem flashing the first time as it seemed to lose connectivity also. But this one appears to be staying online.

So is this pointing at a problem with the WiFi receiver on the other Photon board?

Not necessarily.
There are lots of factors that influence reception and you can’t always compare signal strength of on device with strength on another.
Just recently I had some members that just had devices set to use the external antenna and forgot to revert back to the internal when taking the ext off.
Also if your PC uses the 5GHz band you might see better strength than with 2.4GHz or it might boost its WiFi tranceiver.

The laptop that was being used was set to the same 2.4GHz band rather than the 5GhZ Band. I believe the Photon is limited to the 2.4GHz band so we could not try using the other band.

Can you provide a link to how to utilize an external antenna. Perhaps reception would be better through an external antenna. We do move these Photons around the office and this particular unit seems to be the only one having difficulties in the one particular office where other devices should a high signal strength.

You could use any 2.4GHz uFL antenna, but here you can find two possible ones

And in order to use that antenna you’d need to use this code

STARTUP(WiFi.selectAntenna(ANT_EXTERNAL))

and when you want to go back to the internal one

STARTUP(WiFi.selectAntenna(ANT_INTERNAL))