Connecting the photon to the wifi

[Alex Vallone]

Hi everyone,

I having trouble connecting my new l3d cube to the Internet. I have the photon chip in the cube and when connecting it useing the app for the particle boards. When connecting the process it works fine until the " verification process" in which it says that the wifi Information I entered is incorrect.

Please help!

Thanks,

-Alex

[Werner M.]

It will not be possible to help you without you giving more details.
I suggest you copy all of the output given by the commands you are issuing (obfuscating the particular details such as passwords) and post them in here.

-Werner

[Philip Schroth]

I agree. I had a problem with this as well. I switched my WPA encryption and then it started to connect. but the Photon is far of perfect in wifi .. i experience dropouts regularly. and started to work suddenly again. A wifi AP card is on its way to do a deep level inspection to see whats going on on the wifi side with the photon. For that i keep peeps posted here once the card comes in

Op woensdag 30 december 2015 23:42:14 UTC+1 schreef Werner M.:

[Werner M.]

(...)but the Photon is far of perfect in wifi .. i experience dropouts regularly.

Philip, to me this is clearly saying you either have a flaky or misconfigured LAN or WiFi AP, or your photon has a defective wifi module in it. The cube's connection should be steady. Not the way you are describing.

In order to pinpoint whether this problem you're having is in your infrastructure, check carefully if it also propagates throughout all of your connected devices (PC, smartphones, etc) - if this is confirmed, you may need to check your LAN configuration settings carefully in your WiFi router / AP. If this instability is only present when the photon is connected, then maybe there is a chance this unit may have come defective from factory.

-Werner

[Philip Schroth]

I have had this on multiple places  i tried to bound it to a philips experia box all default settings i cannot connect it at all. a WRT54GL cant connect. a TPlink at my house works. so so. 

Indeed it can be defective. I will try it again . if the problem persist. i will request for an exchange one then. it is kinda annoying as it limits my time to program for the device. this made me stepping down to an arduino uno. 

Op maandag 4 januari 2016 20:08:54 UTC+1 schreef Werner M.:

[Philip Schroth]

Last night. multiple breakouts. even it stayed flashing purple and was not be able to get it out. a powercycle did the job.

Op dinsdag 5 januari 2016 16:30:37 UTC+1 schreef Philip Schroth:

[Werner M.]

@Philip: I'm still not 100% convinced the problem lies in your photon as there are still many unanswered questions and with wireless connections there are many different variables to consider - I strongly suggest you do a thorough check in your LAN setup, below are a few pointers:

Most problems come from misconfigured/misplaced wifi ap/routers. Usually, when you have 2 or more separate wifi ap's in your own house (or even closeby neighbors) the first thing you do is use a wifi network analyzer tool to map which signals are being broadcast throughout your house - you might find out, e.g., that some neigbor's ap is getting through your walls and using the same channel your router is broadcasting at. If you find that, then with the help of that same tool you can determine which other channels are less congestioned and set your ap to use that one (normally they are set to automatically find a random channel). You can also look in what RF bands are most congestioned (as in, 2.4GHz or 5GHz) and if your router allows for it, switch it to a different band. So isolating your home wifi as much as possible from other sources is definately the way to go, regardless of anything else you might wanna try.

Other solutions involve boosting the wifi signal in your home by using a repeater - you can make an old router behave like a repeater. You probably will need to load a different firmware into it in order to make it work like that. I've gathered a few videos that made me find out about these and get my home wifi fixed. All of the above info is explained in more details in these:

https://youtu.be/7o9Zqvu0tI0
https://youtu.be/nktxQ9vY7-M
https://youtu.be/cNfCFuh1ukg
https://youtu.be/GFdEO2VYENs
https://youtu.be/n3plXzZ1Ckc

Good luck.
-Werner

[Philip Schroth]

Thanks. But i am not a nono on radio waves. I am a HAM radio amateur myself. And i face the problem on multiple locations. My router is running DDWRT and set to channel 6, I dont own a 5GHZ router. I will get however a Software AP card to do further deep packet inspection what goes wrong on the 802.11 Layer. which i cannot analyse at this stage. The congestiuon on channel 6 is at my location quite low. as i can analyse this with an SDR reciever. to make sure that all is set. I was tired of WIFI issues. so i made sure all is set right at my locations.I appreciate your efforts Werner. But still i am not going to give the PHoton the fault till i do a packet inspection of the wifi protocol between the Photon and my AP to limit our that its on my side. ONce i have ruled that out and the Photon is the cause i will post here what my experiences are. Maybe it can be fixed with a so called firmware update ( a bug or so )_ 

To be continued...  ;)

Op woensdag 6 januari 2016 15:38:49 UTC+1 schreef Werner M.:

[Werner M.]

I appreciate your comments Philip. But there are a couple facts I want to point out:
It cannot be a general failure on the photons - the reason I'm saying it is because not everyone is experiencing the issues you describe. I for one, am not. My photon connects and *stays* connected, rock-solid (as I have pointed out in my first comment).

So the reasons why I have placed my directions to you with regards to identifying congestion problems in WiFi networks is that these are common problems that can happen to anyone, regardless of their expertise level.
I am not a ham radio operator (at least not for a good 20+ years since I sold my YAESU) but I also own and operate a SDR (with SDR# and HDSDR) and I like experimenting with that as well. I also have experience with packet sniffing with Wireshark.
What I'm trying to point out is that you can count on the fact your network may be susceptible to interference from external sources (do you have a power RF booster connected to your ham setup? Big antenna? Are these on most of the times when you're trying to operate your photon through WiFi? Where is your Photon located at? Is it near your radio / antenna? Is the Wireless AP near your radio / antenna? How well shielded are the outputs in your radio setup?) - so these are all questions we need to ask and make sure we've answered beforehand.

I had problems in early stages of my wifi setup and I was able to sort them all out by looking for the answers in google and following the guidelines. You can do a simple inspection in your wireless network with any phone app such as this and this. They can tell you a whole lot about your network without even the need for you to start analyzing packet traffic on Wireshark.

You can go through these diagnostics with Wireshark and even setting up a spectrum analysis on the entire 433MHz to 2.4GHz RF range, or you can try to start simple and experiment on the tips I pointed out, relocate your AP / Photon, etc. I'll leave it up to you.
If you wanna post more results here I'll be happy to read through and comment on them.

-Werner

[The dutch man.]

Lovely. the HDSDR is a wonderfull piece . I can recommend you a Hackrfone that is a great tool.. runs up to 6 Ghz...  

My photon was  running around the house till i got my operation last monday on my hip fracture I am bound to the bed now. I have no booster or what so ever. just a TPlink AP. but i must point out at my friends house and at my parent house the photon doesnt connect at all. But i am NOT want this replaced. as i am 100 percent sure it is somewhere in the software side. I will go to the bottom of this... As i think the problem is not sitting on the layer 3 and above. i looking a bit lower. But its a nice thing to experiment now i am bound to my bed and house. 

Op woensdag 6 januari 2016 21:17:33 UTC+1 schreef Werner M.:

[The dutch man.]

Problem solved.. I have added an external power supply. and all the problems that i was facing are vanished..

Op donderdag 14 januari 2016 12:46:53 UTC+1 schreef The dutch man.: