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NPHighview

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Joined: 02/09/2020
Location: United States
Posts: 200

Posted: 04:55pm 03 Jun 2023

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Folks, I've been playing with the PicoW, primarily as a means to get NTP time to an analog clock program I've published elsewhere here on the Forum. I had also planned to play with UDP with the most recent versions of the firmware.

One thing I've noticed recently is a severe lack of reliability of our home's WiFi, resulting in me having to reset the router stack (Fiber->ISP's router->my TP-Link WiFi router) 4-5 times per day. This is irritating :-)

My TP-Link WiFi router is set up with four channels:
5 GHz channel for our home computers and backup server on our private netework
2.4 GHz channel for older tech on our private network
5 GHz IOT channel, largely unused
2.4 GHz IOT channel for smart outlets & switches

... all using SSID and passwords. The PicoWs are using the 2.4 GHz channel for older tech because I can remember its password :-)

Recently, I've been just toggling the power on the TP-Link WiFi router, rather than the whole stack. This seems to be as useful as resetting everything, so I'm hypothesizing that it's the interaction between the PicoWs and the TP-Link router, rather than a problem further upstream.

This morning, I unplugged all of my PicoW's, and have so far not seen any WiFi problems.

Some questions:
* Is anyone else encountering these problems?
* Any recommendations on router configurations to use with the PicoW
* Any recommendations on non-TP-Link routers to use? Or maybe a separate router altogether for PicoW experiments?

Thank you, and again kudos to Peter and Geoff for this incredible firmware, and to all for this incredible Forum environment.

Live in the Future. It's Just Starting Now!

hhtg1968
Senior Member

Joined: 25/05/2023
Location: Germany
Posts: 123

Posted: 08:53pm 03 Jun 2023

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NPHighview said Folks, I've been playing with the PicoW, primarily as a means to get NTP time to an analog clock program I've published elsewhere here on the Forum. I had also planned to play with UDP with the most recent versions of the firmware.

One thing I've noticed recently is a severe lack of reliability of our home's WiFi, resulting in me having to reset the router stack (Fiber->ISP's router->my TP-Link WiFi router) 4-5 times per day. This is irritating :-)

My TP-Link WiFi router is set up with four channels:
5 GHz channel for our home computers and backup server on our private netework
2.4 GHz channel for older tech on our private network
5 GHz IOT channel, largely unused
2.4 GHz IOT channel for smart outlets & switches

... all using SSID and passwords. The PicoWs are using the 2.4 GHz channel for older tech because I can remember its password :-)

Recently, I've been just toggling the power on the TP-Link WiFi router, rather than the whole stack. This seems to be as useful as resetting everything, so I'm hypothesizing that it's the interaction between the PicoWs and the TP-Link router, rather than a problem further upstream.

This morning, I unplugged all of my PicoW's, and have so far not seen any WiFi problems.

Some questions:
* Is anyone else encountering these problems?
* Any recommendations on router configurations to use with the PicoW
* Any recommendations on non-TP-Link routers to use? Or maybe a separate router altogether for PicoW experiments?

Thank you, and again kudos to Peter and Geoff for this incredible firmware, and to all for this incredible Forum environment.

i have such a router too, but no problems.

andreas

Senior Member

Joined: 07/12/2020
Location: Germany
Posts: 207

Posted: 08:35am 05 Jun 2023

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NPHighview said Folks, I've been playing with the PicoW, primarily as a means to get NTP time to an analog clock program I've published elsewhere here on the Forum.

Do you specify a dedicated ntp server?

I have startet to use my local router (FritzBox) as ntp-server and that works robust.
If you use just WEB NTP without specifying any dedicated ntp server then it might be that the ntp server (i.e. pool.ntp.org) is not responding at every request - especially when you have many pico w all requesting the same ntp server.

May be your router is accumulating open sessions which will not be closed when there is no answer from the ntp server?

WEB NTP 2,"192.168.178.1" works fine for me.

-andreas

NPHighview

Senior Member

Joined: 02/09/2020
Location: United States
Posts: 200

Posted: 02:40pm 05 Jun 2023

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Andreas - Vielen Dank! for that insight. This is the sort of "cumulative" degradation behavior that I'm seeing. I will switch to the specific NTP server and see what effect that has.

Currently, toggling the router off and then on resolves the problem for a few hours (my program checks NTP once on power-up, then hourly for a synch-up).

By the way, I acquired a LiPo battery pack for the WaveShare P-E-B from Amazon that worked great once I swapped the leads in the connector.

Thanks again.

- Steve
Edited 2023-06-06 00:45 by NPHighview

Live in the Future. It's Just Starting Now!

NPHighview

Senior Member

Joined: 02/09/2020
Location: United States
Posts: 200

Posted: 11:21pm 05 Jun 2023

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Rather than use Andreas' suggested fixed server address (thanks again, Andreas), I've found that "time.nist.gov" works great. It has a large number of NTP servers, and multiple repeated requests are distributed. Sending multiple NTP requests in just a few seconds is interpreted as a DDS attack, and further connections are refused.

WEB NTP -7, "time.nist.gov" worked great.

Live in the Future. It's Just Starting Now!

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