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Orange Pi Zero WIFI awful


scargill

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I have the Orange Pi Zero - working using last week's nightly build which has the WIFI intact and I've since updated using the usual apt-get upgrade.

 

The WIFI is awful - wired is fine - I'm using Xenial - nmtui to setup - and I have two issues - despite turning off WIFI power management and being no more than 3ft away from the (new) access point - WIFI is so sluggish you can tell when typing into a terminal!!  Also despite what nmtui should do - if I turn off the access point (simulating an issue with say power) and back on, the Orange Pi Zero will NOT reconnect even minutes later without rebooting.

 

Anyone have ideas as to (a) how to improve the WIFI to make it usable and (B) what might be needed in some kind of script - to check google every minute and resurrect the WIFI if it fails - or some other solution. 

 

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I am noticing that it will periodically drop, but not what you are seeing.  It stays connected for hours.  I'm running Aerohive Access Points, which are enterprise grade.  I find that the OPI0 wifi driver is picking AP's that are not nearby which kills performance.  It does eventually find the closer AP and roam to it.

 

Performance is a bit pokey, 26mb/s... but that could be my cheap SD card in it.

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In my case there is only the one access point it can connect to.   Connected for hours is no good - I need connected forever (or at least reconnect when lost). Generally speaking once connected though very poor, it stays connected - but any kind of access point failure (power) and that's the end of it.  That is do-able with a script - the important thing is how poor the WIFI connection is bearing in mind I have very fast broadband and a modern home access point able to handle movies on the mobile phone for example.

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Also despite what nmtui should do - if I turn off the access point (simulating an issue with say power) and back on, the Orange Pi Zero will NOT reconnect even minutes later without rebooting.

 

It does re-connect, tested very often and it always worked. Armbian documentation contained the phrase

to get Wi-Fi working use 'sudo nmtui'

some weeks ago. For whatever reasons these occurences all got deleted and are now replaced with

nmtui-connect YOUR_ROUTER_SSID

 

The missing 'sudo' makes the difference. Without you create user settings, when using sudo or run nmtui as root you create a system setting that lives below /etc/NetworkManager/system-connections/ -- I was only referrring to the latter and this is the only mode I ever tested.

 

Edit: Without sudo settings can't be saved, so everything fine here.

 

Apart from that output from 'sudo armbianmonitor -u' would be helpful and also 'nmcli dev wifi list'.

 

https://forum.armbian.com/index.php/topic/2808-orange-pi-zero-went-to-the-market/page-2#entry19336 (click on the spoiler to see how it looked like at my location with AP being a few meters away and one wall in between)

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It does re-connect, tested very often and it always worked. Armbian documentation contained the phrase

some weeks ago. For whatever reasons these occurences all got deleted and are now replaced with

 

The missing 'sudo' makes the difference. Without you create user settings, when using sudo or run nmtui as root you create a system setting that lives below /etc/NetworkManager/system-connections/ -- I was only referrring to the latter and this is the only mode I ever tested.

 

Edit: Without sudo settings can't be saved, so everything fine here.

 

Apart from that output from 'sudo armbianmonitor -u' would be helpful and also 'nmcli dev wifi list'.

 

https://forum.armbian.com/index.php/topic/2808-orange-pi-zero-went-to-the-market/page-2#entry19336 (click on the spoiler to see how it looked like at my location with AP being a few meters away and one wall in between)

 

So...  I wiped the existing WIFI entry (which required SUDO anyway) this morning.. and started from scratch. Using SUDO I made a WIFI entry and put in the details.... and activated the WIFI.  I rebooted with no ETHERNET lead and the WIFI connection came up. I tested it.   I unplugged the access point for maybe 20 seconds and plugged it back in. I waited 5 minutes while typing this response.

 

Nothing - zilch - zero.  I checked with Advanced IP Scanner. No sign of the Orange Pi Zero. 5 minutes passed and I power-cycled the board...it o  Distance 3ft. it o fcourse came up (and yes I'm using the little aerial that came with it).

 

Output from sudo armbianmonitor -u

 

pi@orangepizero:~$ sudo armbianmonitor -u
/var/log/armhwinfo.log has been uploaded to http://sprunge.us/LjPX
Please post the URL in the Armbian forum where you've been asked for.
 
nmcli dev wifi list
 
 
pi@orangepizero:~$ nmcli dev wifi list
*  SSID    MODE   CHAN  RATE       SIGNAL  BARS  SECURITY
*  beyond  Infra  11    54 Mbit/s  89      â–‚▄▆█  WPA1 WPA2
pi@orangepizero:~$
 
Except that in PUTTY instead of that nice signal strength shown here you get rubbish characters.
 
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Signal strength looks ok (but why is the other information missing?), then you have some occurences of lost interrupts in the logs (known problem with this driver, I lost track how to prevent this) and then unfortunately everything that might be interesting is simply missing from the log (the '### shutdown' occurences, only 4 times so the other times it seems you pulled the plug?).

 

As already suggested over at tech.scargill.net: Serial console (using Micro USB or the pin header) is mandatory. This way you can do a clean shutdown and then the interesting stuff gets into the logs.

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Serial console (using Micro USB or the pin header) is mandatory. This way you can do a clean shutdown and then the interesting stuff gets into the logs.

USB keyboard should also work, as there is a getty on tty1: connect keyboard, type

root
<password>
poweroff

with some pauses to allow the system to react. No display needed.

 

(regarding micro-USB: g_serial and agetty for the micro-USB are not configured in the armbian image as shipped).

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