Weak WIFI signal causes device to hang

Claude Robitaille

My omega2+ would stop to respond to pings over WiFi after a while (like 30 minutes). It also stops to respond over wired Ethernet at the same time. After realizing it works perfectly elsewhere in my home, I attached an antenna and the problem disappeared. So, somehow, the weak wifi signal causes the device to break and stop processing anything; not only the Ethernet port stopped working but also the toggling of a GPIO stopped.

It is because the wifi kernel code is jamming the OS when the signal is weak? Also noted is that the device never recovers; a simple out of connect situation due to a weak signal should show moments of no connection and moment of connection (I let the device run overnight and it never recovered).

Lazar Demin

@Claude-Robitaille which firmware are you running?
If you're not on v0.2.0 or greater, please update your firmware by running oupgrade on the command line and trying again

Claude Robitaille

@Lazar-Demin I am on 0.2.0 b186. I tested last week and there was no update but I see now that there is one so I will give it a try. (0.2.0 b198)

Lazar Demin

@Claude-Robitaille If you have an Expansion Dock or Mini Dock, try connecting to the Omega's command line via serial, the kernel debug output should give you an idea of what's going on. You can also try running logread | grep ap_client, this will give you some insight into what the wifi driver is doing.

If the wifi warp core driver is not connected to a network, it will scan on a fairly frequent interval for available networks and see if it can connect to any of them. The scanning process takes up a lot of the network bandwidth so the Omega may appear to be non-responsive during the scans. That being said, it shouldn't totally eat up the Omega's cycles to the point of stopping the toggling of a GPIO.

Try the above and post the snippets of the output, we'll try to get to the bottom of this.

Claude Robitaille

@Lazar-Demin Sorry, all I have is my own PCB or the power dock. My own PCB has an Ethernet port but that too stops working (the link LED on the switch I am connecting to is Off).