We are attempting to setup our FarmBot within an educational environment. Our environment has an enterprise class wifi network so we have multiple wireless access points and 2 different SSIDs. When I am using the wifi config tool I see multiple SSIDs being broadcast, It looks to me like it is picking up the SSID from every AP (similar to the BSSID per AP). So I am seeing multiple of the same SSID. Here are my issues:
-We have a guest network that is technically an open network (no password). I cannot get this network to work, I never see it try to connect.
-When I am able to get it to connect to an SSID it connects but if it roams to another AP in the area it will not reconnect.
Some questions and comments:
We tried the manual setup and it seems to not work.
-What limitations are set on the farmbot for its connection to wifi?
-Can the farmbot connect to an open network?
-Does the farmbot do something once it connects to a network to verify it is a good connection?
Do you see the network in FarmbotOS configurator’s wifi list? If not that means Farmbot just can not see it. This could be to distance, or channel pollution (it sounds like this may be the issue for you?). The wifi chip on the raspberry pi 3 isn’t known for being very good in these circumstances.
Are you moving the pi and expecting it to reconnect? I suspect this has to do with the problem above.
Manual setup won’t help if the pi actually can not see the network which is what i believe to be happening.
It should be able to, i think you have different issues at play here.
Farmbot
attempts to connect to the access point supplied. (this seems to be the step failing in your case)
attempts to authenticate with a wireless network if needed. (in you’re case it is not)
checks that it has an ip address.
checks that it can sync time with pool.ntp.org.
checks that it can make dns requests.
checks that it can reach Farmbot Web services.
Tries to authorize with Farmbot Web services.
Connects to both HTTP endpoints, and AMQP/MQTT.
If any of those steps fail, farmbot will fail to boot, and need to be reconfigured, and hopefully tell you what went wrong.
Thanks for the reply! Yes I am seeing the wifi networks. The main issue (what I think is the issue) is that I am seeing multiple’s of the same SSID. Which leads me to believe that the farmbot is not really meant to connect to an environment that has multiple APs to support a business environment. So to give you an example of what I am seeing, say I have two SSIDs broadcast “ABCGuest” and “ABC”. I see multiples of these when I do the wifi config tool, this is what I am thinking it is trying to connect to a specific AP instead of just the SSID on any AP. Also I am able to make this work for a certain SSID if I turn it off on other APs. But I cannot make the farmbot connect to the open SSID. Is there something I have to verify is allowed on this open network? I know this is difficult to troubleshoot over a forum but I appreciate any input. Thanks
Very interesting. I’m going to check right now that open wifi networks work just to be sure before debugging further. It is strange that you are seeing the same networks more than once. Farmbot uses the ssid, but it may internally be turning it into the bssid.
Multiple network names in the list should not cause connection issues. I’ve connected FarmBot OS to a mesh network by picking the first one in the list and it connected without issue.
So aside from the farmbot not connecting to our open guest network. We are able to connect it to another SSID with a passphrase. But it still seems like it is “sticking” to that AP. If we turn off that AP and another one close by is broadcasting that SSID the farmbot will not connect / roam to that AP even though it is within range and another device like a phone will roam to that AP.
Sorry about the radio silence. Yes we’ve been looking into this and found a couple bugs. We are working on a small update that should allow connection to open networks more reliability. As for the “roaming” issue I will have to take a harder look at that. It is not a use case I have ever tested before, but it seems like it should be ok. I’ll try to test this later today also.
Just checking back in if there has been a released update with any wifi fixes. I have a question, more for understanding purposes. When you are setting up the wifi on the farmbot, you select the network (or manual entry) then you go to the next screen and have a drop down with two things to choose. I think one if the RaspPi and the other is the arduino board. Which one should I be using? Does it matter? Does one have more wifi options than the other? etc…
The next release, which includes some network connection updates, is nearly complete.
Are you referring to the firmware hardware board selection in step 2 of the process? FarmBot OS is installed on the Raspberry Pi, so as long as you are using FarmBot OS, you are using the Raspberry Pi.
Great news on the next release! Yes I am referring to step 2. So I should be selecting “Farmduino”, correct? Out of curiosity what does the other selection do? Is there an arduino option for farmbot?