Moodlebox 4.0.0 : Wifi connections drops after each request

Hannes

Hi again

Thank you for the help. The results so far:

The wifi access point time graph analysis with the WifiAnalyzer app on the phone connected to the MoodleBox Wifi shows no dropping of the signal. The resolution seems to be too low because a concurrent ping 10.0.0.1 test continues to show the dropping of the signal.
!
With the other Wifi net (=the local router) switched off the dropping of the signal continues:
I used the Moodle box web gui to change the Wifi settings:
From country 'Switzerland' to 'Ghana' while maintaining channel 11.

The result is similar. I also tested the access with another tablet and could do some work on it. But the response time was rather slow. Because of the dropping of the wifi signal and the re-connection time used I guess.
To check against another system I used another micro sd card with
https://www.raspberrypi.com/software/operating-systems/
Raspberry Pi OS Lite --- Release date: October 30th 2021 installed.
I connected through the local wifi run the ping command
ping 192.168.1.11
.....
64 bytes from 192.168.1.11: icmp_seq=562 ttl=64 time=3.26 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.11: icmp_seq=563 ttl=64 time=7.14 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.11: icmp_seq=564 ttl=64 time=3.26 ms

--- 192.168.1.11 ping statistics ---
564 packets transmitted, 545 received, 3.36879% packet loss, time 564188ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 2.402/7.476/1213.642/52.849 ms, pipe 2

The results so far seem to indicate that it is not an access point channel conflict and probably also not a hardware problem of the Pi3B+ though I am not sure if the test in under point 4 covers the access point issue properly.

What should I try next?

Regards
Hannes

Hannes

P.S. Point 4 tests the RPi as a Wifi client, not as an access point, I suppose.

Hannes

Hi again

Update: I installed a moodlebox-3.12.0.img on a different micro sd card.
There is no problem with the wifi signal as the following ping test shows.

Moodlebox
Version 3.12.0, 2021-07-11.

ping 10.0.0.1
.........
64 bytes from 10.0.0.1: icmp_seq=499 ttl=64 time=3.52 ms
64 bytes from 10.0.0.1: icmp_seq=500 ttl=64 time=3.09 ms
64 bytes from 10.0.0.1: icmp_seq=501 ttl=64 time=4.48 ms
64 bytes from 10.0.0.1: icmp_seq=502 ttl=64 time=16.1 ms
64 bytes from 10.0.0.1: icmp_seq=503 ttl=64 time=2.50 ms
^C
--- 10.0.0.1 ping statistics ---
503 packets transmitted, 503 received, 0% packet loss, time 502796ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 1.398/7.450/323.424/24.228 ms

So I plan to work with version 3.12.0.
I am though ready to do inquiries why version 4.0.0 has problems if somebody can show me how to enable debugging / tracing of the access point activities.

But as for moodlebox version 3.12.0
I do not know the moodle admin account user name and password for 3.12.0. I did not find it on the moodlebox.net website. Could somebody help me please?

--Hannes

Hannes

The admin user name / password for Moodlebox 3.12.0 is also
moodlebox
MoodleBox4$

Nicolas

Indeed. This has not changed since MoodleBox 2.6.0. See: https://moodlebox.net/en/help/moodlebox-credentials/.

Nicolas

Hannes This could be a bug with the new minimal firmware. See also this.

Hannes

I understand that Moodlebox 4.1.0 will have a different firmware software for the wireless access point (AP). And that your tests went well so far. Is the test image available for download?

Nicolas

Hannes I understand that Moodlebox 4.1.0 will have a different firmware software for the wireless access point (AP).

It depends. MoodleBox relies on the official Raspberry Pi OS. The new minimal firmware is already included in MoodleBox 4.0.0, and the tests went well indeed. ~~I'm afraid I got no other feedback of buggy behaviour than this.~~

For next version, there's no plan to use unofficial firmware, but if Raspberry Foundation updates the firmware, we'll have a new one.

And there's no test image yet. For reference, progress towards next version can be followed in Github.

Edit: There's another similar feedback (in french), but with no detail.

Hannes

So the firmware for the AP currently included in Moodlebox 4.0.0 is a minimal one and from the official RPi OS distribution. It is supposed to support more WIFI clients again.

So for my case I continue to use Moodlebox 3.12.0 (which needs an ethernet cable to connect to another network) and check for news from time to time.

krause

There another report about this problem
https://github.com/iiab/iiab/issues/2853#issuecomment-1004439533

Nicolas

krause I think this is not the same issue: the wireless chip firmware version is different. On MoodleBox 4.0.0, version is 7.45.241. The report linked shows older version 7.45.18.

FYI: Check your wireless chip firmware version with

dmesg | grep brcmfmac

You'll get a line like

[    6.328844] brcmfmac: brcmf_c_preinit_dcmds: Firmware: BCM4345/6 wl0: Nov  1 2021 00:37:12 version 7.45.241 (1a2f2fa CY) FWID 01-5209c09

indicating the version.