iSpindel - Can't connect to Wifi AP

[grindlay]

I appreciate that there hasn't been much activity on this thread recently but I wanted to share my connectivity issues here in case it helps anyone. My iSpindel is located in the fermenter in my garage with brick/stone wall between it and my router. In spite of this, I managed to get the iSpindel to connect and transmit on WiFi. Unfortunately, it has lost its connection about 2 days into the brew on x2 occasions. I installed a powerline extender with WiFi AP and changed the SSID on my router so that I could re-use it with the extender instead. To my surprise, this actually worked and my iSpindel has reappeared in Ubidots and is transmitting normally. The WiFi AP is less than a metre from the fermenter so no signal strength issues now. I'm guessing that after a certain number of failed attempts to connect to an AP, the device gives up, although on my first brew, it did actually reconnect with a gap of about 5 days!

 

[DuncB]

@grindlay

The ispindle thread on this forum is long and has many examples of poor WiFi signal issues and solutions with boosters and repeaters. Also lots of other good info.
But glad you got sorted.

 

[GuitsBoy]

Sorry for necroposting -

Ive been going down the rabbit hole for a bit chasing a highly unstable wifi connection. Maybe once every 5 to 10 hours it will successfully update ubidots. The iSpindel logging simply shows: ispindel "Failed to restore connection..." without much more useful info to go on.

Checking online there are a number of other projects based on the esp8266 which have wifi instability issues, especilally with older wifi libraries. Most of the workaround have suggested forcing 802.11g in the firmware code. Unfortunately all three iSpindels are dunked in beer at the moment, and I dont fully grasp compiling the iSpindel code from scratch.

Instead, Ive been poking around in my router, toggling QoS on and off, reserved DHCP addresses, etc. I finally found something that helps enormously. I reduced the 802.11 b/g/n bandwidth from 20/40 to 20, effectively reducing the bandwidth to G levels. Thats fine for my low throughput smart devices like this. I also previously set the control channel to 11, and fixed it to stay there. That was the fix for previous issues with my wifii thermostats and smart A/C units. Probably using a similar chip.

Anyway, if you run into wifi instability with your wemos d1 mini, try reducing your 2.4 ghz wifi to 20 mhz and see if that helps. I can still run my streaming devices and phones off the 5ghz SSID as fast as ever.