[SOLVED] Trouble after switching from Ethernet to WLAN

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Hi all,
I currently have some trouble with my Pimatic-Homeduino after switchung from eth0 connect to wlan0 connect.
After doing so, incl. staying to the static IP and reconfiguration of my router, Pimatic only works partly.
After reboot, ifconfig shows the correct address at wlan0 and no at eth0.

The behavior of the Pimatic is as follows:

• The WEB-GUI is shown propperly, Temperature data is updated (the nano receives data)
• But the buttons in WEB-GUI only seems to be dummies now - it seems to be, that switching them, doesn’t push any signal out via the nano any longer
• I tried it also by a dedicated rule, which simply switched a button from off to on, but again, only the status of the button in the GUI changed, but nothing seems to be send out any longer
• I already tested to go back to eth0, which then let Pimatic again work 100% correct
  Has anybody an idea what that might be? - what has the access-medium to the raspberry to do with the Pimatic-Homeduino functionality itself?

@pedder did you clear your browser cache(try incognito tab)? Could try that first.

I also had similar issues, it seems that the WiFi signal overrides the 433 MHz signal, solution for me was to move the USB Wifi Dongle away from the other components with a simple USB extension cable.

Hi both,
thanks first for the quick replies👍

@cherberg, as I’m using a PI3 (integrated WLAN) I already did it the other way. The nano is plugged via an 0,75m USB cable. Real distance between the device is ~0,5m. As I’m an (in former times 😊) E-Engineer, I also already thought in that direction, but couldn’t imagine, that with that relative low output powers, such general and reproducible problems might occur. Anyhow I will check this and use the other 25cm and if there is something in my cellar, put a copper sheet, or some other metal, between the PI and the nano, later on, when I’m back home.

@Gleno0h, I tested the access from different devices (Win7 PC, iPad and iPhone). Everywhere the same result. But as I also tested all accesses via the former Eth0 connected PI, I will check also your point when I’m back home later.

… coming back later 😊

Hello again,
sorry but your hints didn’t lead to success.
Distance between PI3 and Nano (with antennas) is ~80cm. I cannot believe that we have a radio-signal problem here.
I also deleted the browser-caches and in addition deleted the assigned IP addresses in the fritz-box and let her assign new ones.
Subsequent booting with only enabled WLAN (unplugged eth0) has also no positiv effect. Afterwords ‘hot-plugging’ eth0 directly brings back the full functionallity.
… no success, I’m clueless …

As I’m anyhow currently setting up another PI3, originally for pure streaming purposes, I will try to ‘workaround’ this is another way.
In contrast to the current one, I will set up the Pimatic installation directly from scratch via WLAN. Eventually this might solve the issue. It will directly become a test, if I’m able to ‘copy’ the automation configuration to another (backup) device.
I plan to do this, after Pimatic install, by configuration the same plugins and then simply copy the config.json in which I didn’t find any network-relevant passages.

Please press thumbs that this will work

… that’s now going beyond my horizon …

As announced, I now set up a complete new PI3 and installed (v0.9.42) from scratch completely via WLAN, in the hope, that my WLAN issue would disapear then.

But it’s still the same!
As long the PI3 is connected via WLAN, I see the Pimatic WEB-GUI (via Browser on my PC), can switch buttons and so on, but it seems to be, as no signal is send out to my switches, shutters, etc., … nothing is working.
Then (hot) plugging the PI3 to an Ethernet cable (in this case the first time in his life), let the everything suddenly work propperly. Funny, if it wouldn’t be sad, without re-loading the frontend in the browser, or re-connecting to the IP my router assigned to the eth0 connect.

I fear, that is whatever problem in the connection via my fritz-box between WLAN connect and Cable connect, but I have no clue

If someone might have an idea, I would be extreme happy to hear about

If it might help, I put in here in addtion the two ifconfig replies:
First with WLAN connect and below after hot-plugging the network cable:

pi@pimatic:~ $ ifconfig
eth0: flags=4099<UP,BROADCAST,MULTICAST> mtu 1500
ether b8:27:eb:8f:41:e8 txqueuelen 1000 (Ethernet)
RX packets 0 bytes 0 (0.0 B )
RX errors 0 dropped 0 overruns 0 frame 0
TX packets 0 bytes 0 (0.0 B )
TX errors 0 dropped 0 overruns 0 carrier 0 collisions 0

lo: flags=73<UP,LOOPBACK,RUNNING> mtu 65536
inet 127.0.0.1 netmask 255.0.0.0
inet6 ::1 prefixlen 128 scopeid 0x10<host>
loop txqueuelen 1000 (Lokale Schleife)
RX packets 9 bytes 759 (759.0 B )
RX errors 0 dropped 0 overruns 0 frame 0
TX packets 9 bytes 759 (759.0 B )
TX errors 0 dropped 0 overruns 0 carrier 0 collisions 0

wlan0: flags=4163<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,MULTICAST> mtu 1500
inet 192.168.188.34 netmask 255.255.255.0 broadcast 192.168.188.255
inet6 fe80::54c8:6299:85f2:4bea prefixlen 64 scopeid 0x20<link>
ether b8:27:eb:da:14:bd txqueuelen 1000 (Ethernet)
RX packets 4387 bytes 261498 (255.3 KiB)
RX errors 0 dropped 682 overruns 0 frame 0
TX packets 12485 bytes 15239402 (14.5 MiB)
TX errors 0 dropped 0 overruns 0 carrier 0 collisions 0

===========================================================

pi@pimatic:~ $ ifconfig
eth0: flags=4163<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,MULTICAST> mtu 1500
inet 192.168.188.47 netmask 255.255.255.0 broadcast 192.168.188.255
inet6 fe80::8050:435a:2190:e303 prefixlen 64 scopeid 0x20<link>
ether b8:27:eb:8f:41:e8 txqueuelen 1000 (Ethernet)
RX packets 73 bytes 4560 (4.4 KiB)
RX errors 0 dropped 60 overruns 0 frame 0
TX packets 528 bytes 365430 (356.8 KiB)
TX errors 0 dropped 0 overruns 0 carrier 0 collisions 0

lo: flags=73<UP,LOOPBACK,RUNNING> mtu 65536
inet 127.0.0.1 netmask 255.0.0.0
inet6 ::1 prefixlen 128 scopeid 0x10<host>
loop txqueuelen 1000 (Lokale Schleife)
RX packets 9 bytes 759 (759.0 B )
RX errors 0 dropped 0 overruns 0 frame 0
TX packets 9 bytes 759 (759.0 B )
TX errors 0 dropped 0 overruns 0 carrier 0 collisions 0

wlan0: flags=4163<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,MULTICAST> mtu 1500
inet 192.168.188.34 netmask 255.255.255.0 broadcast 192.168.188.255
inet6 fe80::54c8:6299:85f2:4bea prefixlen 64 scopeid 0x20<link>
ether b8:27:eb:da:14:bd txqueuelen 1000 (Ethernet)
RX packets 5215 bytes 310120 (302.8 KiB)
RX errors 0 dropped 836 overruns 0 frame 0
TX packets 13283 bytes 15855951 (15.1 MiB)
TX errors 0 dropped 0 overruns 0 carrier 0 collisions 0

No idea, but i would check why there are buffer-overruns…

Really wired behavior I would also guess in the direction of rf interference or to low power. If it was about a plugin not being able to talk to something over TCP/IP it could be the case that the plugin binds to the wrong interface but in your case this should not be the problem as it is only serial communication.

Steps I would take:

• Make 100% sure it is not a problem with the webinterface (I think you basically did this with your toggling rule) by checking the javascript console in your browser for errors.
• Make sure to enable debugging for the homeduino plugin and check the log for errors
• Make sure there is enough power provided
  • Remove unnecessary USB devices connected to PI
  • Switch power supply
  • Make sure power supply can provide 2A+
• Make sure interference is not the problem (it shouldn’t be as 433Mhz and 2.4Ghz are far apart) by using an even longer cable
  • my better guess is that if it is an interference it is more likely to be about “dirty” power than about the actual transmission frequencies

Hi @thex and @Michael-Rudek,
thanks first also for sharing your ideas

I tested around now the whole evening, but in the end, same status
Here my summary:

1. No other devices on USB-ports (already given)
2. Current Power-Supply 2.5A, this set: https://www.amazon.de/gp/product/B01M3QWZE7/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o02_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
3. Tested also Power Supply of 2nd set (new PI3B)
4. Tested Apple iPad 2A Power Supply (maybe as of insufficient/dirty 5V)
5. Extended USB cable, moved Nano ~2,5m away from PI3B and ~4m away from fritz-box (=>leads to only 1,5m distance to one of my shutters)
6. Tested afterwards also an only 20cm long USB-connect between PI3B and Nano
7. Checked the net for Raspberry RX drops (esp. P3B):
   https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=188891
   a. switched WLAN Power Management ‘OFF’ sudo iwconfig wlan0 power off
   b. set WiFi-Country to ‘DE’ sudo raspi-config …
   => less drops (ifconfig, see below)
   c. learnt iwconfig (see below, parameters seems to be ok)
   d. tried update by rpi-update (didn’t work at all because of missing ca-certificate (don’t know what that is))
8. Tested with external WiFi-Dongel
   a. disabled internal wlan0 (and bt) by blacklisting
   (/etc/modeprobe.d/raspi-blacklist.conf)
   #wifi
   blacklist brcmfmac
   blacklist brcmutil
   #bt
   blacklist btbcm
   blacklist hci_uart
9. Tested also newly installed PI3B (incl. above points 6 a,b,c) also with external WiFi-Dongel (and also disabled internal wlan0 by blacklisting)
   Result: no success …
   Going to bed now …. Good night to all and thanks again for maybe further ideas…

PI3B (old)
pi@PI3:~ $ ifconfig
wlan0: flags=4163<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,MULTICAST> mtu 1500
inet 192.168.188.62 netmask 255.255.255.0 broadcast 192.168.188.255
inet6 fe80::ba27:ebff:fe43:bc1e prefixlen 64 scopeid 0x20<link>
ether b8:27:eb:43:bc:1e txqueuelen 1000 (Ethernet)
RX packets 25424 bytes 1460957 (1.3 MiB)
RX errors 0 dropped 28 overruns 0 frame 0
TX packets 68275 bytes 82650421 (78.8 MiB)
TX errors 0 dropped 0 overruns 0 carrier 0 collisions 0

pi@PI3:~ $ iwconfig
wlan0 IEEE 802.11 ESSID:"PeterWLAN"
Mode:Managed Frequency:2.452 GHz Access Point: 38:10….
Bit Rate=72.2 Mb/s Tx-Power=31 dBm
Retry short limit:7 RTS thr:off Fragment thr:off
Power Management:off
Link Quality=65/70 Signal level=-45 dBm
Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0
Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:0 Missed beacon:0

PI3B (new) with External WiFi-Dongel:
wlan0: flags=4163<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,MULTICAST> mtu 1500
inet 192.168.188.70 netmask 255.255.255.0 broadcast 192.168.188.255
inet6 fe80::83de:1d0b:e835:6a7e prefixlen 64 scopeid 0x20<link>
ether 00:87:41:9b:80:e4 txqueuelen 1000 (Ethernet)
RX packets 1991 bytes 198303 (193.6 KiB)
RX errors 0 dropped 43 overruns 0 frame 0
TX packets 7572 bytes 10669654 (10.1 MiB)
TX errors 0 dropped 0 overruns 0 carrier 0 collisions 0

pi@pimatic:~ $ iwconfig
eth0 no wireless extensions.
lo no wireless extensions.
wlan0 IEEE 802.11bgn ESSID:“PeterWLAN” Nickname:"WIFI@REALTEK"
Mode:Managed Frequency:2.452 GHz Access Point: 38:10…
Bit Rate:144.4 Mb/s Sensitivity:0/0
Retry:off RTS thr:off Fragment thr:off
Power Management:off
Link Quality=100/100 Signal level=80/100 Noise level=0/100
Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0
Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:0 Missed beacon:0

Interesting… next step would be debuging the plugin/finding out if there is serial data sent to the arduino

Does that also work by the debuging functionality in the WEB-GUI?
Up to now, I only used it for debuging the received signals from my devices (e.g. thermometers)

Ok, I think debug of the activities should be in the frontend, simply via viewing the current events, right?
As I see here also the incoming temperature data, I guess that it also shows my commands between PI3B and Nano.
Some tests with different devices say, yes the commands are send to the Nano.
Shutters: Up/Down
Switches: On/Off

YES!!! … I got it!!!

Today an order with some spare parts has been delivered.
As I was already in the modus to exchange all HW parts step by step, I just started with the 433Mhz transmitter.

And what happens? => YES, the Pimatic works as it should also propperly via WLAN

So, whatever has gone wrong with that transmitter, he was the problem.
… which will now directly be thrown into the waste

Closing that issue, thanks again for all your ideas and support on this!
… I learned a lot from all the activities

Please keep on developing Pimatic.
From my roughly 2 months experience, it is really super!!!

And if you need a tester, please ping me.
My second PI will definitely be set up as dual-boot LibreELEC/Kodi AND Pimatic test device.