WIFI module "appears" to be restting to factory

[sabo]

Hi guys. My RA was working fine for about 5 days whilst I was away, then I couldnt get updates from it. (dont panic, its not set up on a tank yet, im just running it to get a feel of what issues I might have) I just got home and the wifi attachment was blinking the blue light showing its not associated. So I booted up windows and reset it, and it associated and worked for about an hour. So, I tried running terra term on it, as I had an issue with it initially disassociating, and after setting the ssid and passphrase with tera term it seemed to work better. This time when I used get w in terra term it showed the passphrase as rubygirl which suggests it had reset itself. Then I had issues giving it other commands with terra term, so I thought i'd give it a go with screen in linux. First time connecting it, I got all the right responses and set the baud rate and rebooted it. After that, I couldn't get it to respond to the $$$ command with screen. Now this has happened with terra term as well, and I usually use the other wifi utility to reset it and away I go. But I cannot get it to work with screen any more. It throws some characters on the terminal, which I strongly suspect are chinese characters (i dont have that character set compiled on this box) as I have had it respond with chinese characters when I have connected to it with terra term.
At the moment, it is up and running after restting it again with the wifi utility, but I dont have much hope of it holding the settings. Just for some info, it has run through some cycles where all the lights flash which isnt the usual associated/disassociated or data transfer thing. IIRC the firmware is 4.01 (I had tried to update this last week, but couldn't get it to work either with the wifi utility or terra term (even after reading that 14 page thread) One other thing to note is that my RA will show the red status light when the module is unplugged, and it seems as though the relays reset when its plugged back in and it goes back to green status light (the cable is still plugged into the RA, but not the module) This worries me that if the wifi module plays up, then the RA also plays up. I can cope with not being able to see updates on my phone, but if it causes the RA to crash, then obviously this will be disastrous for the tank.
I'm back off to work again in the morning, so I wont get a chance to actually do anything you guys might suggest, but still hoping that someone may have some idea where to go from here.

[egadgetjnr]

Usually when it throws the characters the baud rate it's using to communicate isn't right. What have you got it set to?

[egadgetjnr]

Also, what's your wifi connection/encryption type?

[sabo]

The first time I connect, its whatever the standard rate is. I couldn't talk to it again after setting it to 57600 as per the manual. However, with terra term, I didnt have that issue after setting the baud rate the last time I configured it with terra. I would have thought that using the wifi utility to restet to factory, would reset it to 9600? My wifi is wpa2 psk

[sabo]

OK, have it playing with screen now, every time I set it to wpa2 (set wlan auth 4) and I reboot it, it goes back to mixed auth. Seems I have to set the channel manually, and i'm not getting it to associate. It also keeps outputting that its exiting AP mode, which seems odd. I have to get up early and won't be able to play with it for a week, so I guess i'll leave it at that.

[sabo]

OK, last post before I really need to head to bed...
<4.00> set c s 1024
AOK
<4.00> set w a 4
AOK
<4.00> set w p xxxxxxx
AOK
<4.00> set w s xxxxxxxx
AOK
<4.00> get w
SSID=xxxxxxx
Chan=0
ExtAnt=0
Join=0
Auth=MIXED
Mask=0x1fff
Rate=12, 24 Mb
Linkmon-Infra=30
Linkmon-AP=3600
Passphrase=xxxx
EAP_Id=userid
EAP_User=peap-user
<4.00> save
Storing in config
<4.00> reboot
*Reboot*wifly-GSX Ver 4.00.1, Apr 19 2013 11:48:28 on RN-131
MAC Addr=00:06:66:30:d7:56
*READY*
WiFly WebConfig v1.06 Apr 19 2013 11:48:44 on RN-131
Mac Addr=00:06:66:30:d7:56
*READY*
AP mode as ReefAngelWifi on chan 1
DCHP Server Init
PIN9=0
PIN9=1
PIN9=2
PIN9=3
PIN9=4
PIN9=5
Factory-reset
<WEB_APP-1.06> get w
SSID=roving1
Chan=0
ExtAnt=0
Join=0
Auth=OPEN
Mask=0x1fff
Rate=12, 24 Mb
Linkmon-Infra=30
Linkmon-AP=3600
Passphrase=rubygirl

seems to be resetting. dodgy module?

[rimai]

You must also change the Join setting. It's set to 0.
Try changing it to 1:

Code: Select all

set w j 1

But I don't think it is the problem.
If it doesn't work, PM for RMA.
That's not normal behavior by looking at this log.
It seems the reset pin might be pulling down even though you are not pressing the push button.
The reset pin is what triggers the web-app to start on reboot. The web-app is the internal AP mode where you put the wifi attachment into AP mode and it creates a new wifi network that you can use to configure settings through a web interface instead of tera term.
This web-app is a new feature they introduced on 4.00 firmware. It's a very neat feature, but unfortunately we can't use
The red led when you unplug the wifi only happens if you leave the cable connected to RA with no attachment on the other end to pull up/down the RX/TX lines.
The next patch will solve this issue.

[sabo]

OK, last play with this thing before I send it back, and it seems I have to give it an argument of 2 instead of 4 to set wpa2 mode. giving it 4 sets it at mixed mode auth. Even the roving networks manual says 4, so if it was a recent firmware change I would have thought they'd have updated it.

[sabo]

OK, so after setting the 56700 baud rate, I cant talk to it anymore in screen and without opening it and hard resetting it, I decided to reset it with the wifi config app. That worked and the thing associates fine afterwards. I have tried getting it to update firmware from that app and it has always failed, and I believe the reason is because the command and firmware files have changed for version 4.0 up, so I suspect the app is using the old update command?
Once it was up and running, i wondered what terra term would output after a fresh setup, and it shows auth as OPEN, when I have a wpa2 network. I am scratching my head here a bit, as everything seems to be different from the docs. I'm happy to play with this and try and get my head around it if anyone is willing to help debug. I'd prefer to do it over irc if possible, as its much easier and instant than forum posts, i can set up a channel on freenode if anyone wants to help sort this.

Edit: fixed the baud rate issue in screen
Double Edit: hmm, I just realised that the plug seats positively if you give it a bit of pressure. This wouldn't surprise me if its causing the thing to misbehave if the pins arent connecting properly when it is not plugged in all the way (i was wondering why the plug seemed loose and I was surprised how much pressure is needed to get it to seat positively) I feel like a bit of a goose, but we shall see if it behaves. Still interested to see why it outputs the wrong auth value though.

[sabo]

And its gone back into blinking mode on all leds, and not available.

[rimai]

Yeah.. send it back.
The wifi utility update firmware button was using the old commands and now it doesn't work anymore.
The auth value doesn't really matter... I think mine shows as OPEN too... Confusing, I know, but that's how they did their firmware.

[sabo]

Will do, i ran get w on it this morning and it has defaulted back to factory settings again. I'll send the cable back with it in case that has something to do with it.