Possible Opensolo Wifi Bug.

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I am experiencing some painful issues with the Wifi functionality:
I have a Stock Solo running latest release of opensolo on the vehicle and the controller.
When I fly the Solo near an area that has many access points in range I lose connectivity from the controller to the Solo at closer range than if out in the middle of nowhere.
This is at about 400FT. range from the controller with the stock antennas. (this is expected normal)
The Solo immediately starts to return home (of course) as it is designed to do this.
However the Solo takes AT LEAST 1 minute to reconnect to the controller (Wifi Access Point)
Sometimes over TWO minutes (by that time it has already landed and is 20 feet from me.
And sometimes it *NEVER* reconnects to the controller.
I've waited 30 minutes after it has landed and have stood 5 10 20 30 and 50 feet from it waiting.
Something is braindead and it won't reconnect.
The ONLY way to get it to connect again is to power cycle the SOLO vehicle.
And then it instantly connects.
Power cycling the controller while in this state had no affect. it never reconnects once in this state from just power cycling or rebooting the controller (access point).
I come here posting with a very good understanding of Wifi how it works interference and such so please keep that in mind and realize I know how this works and what
could be going on here and also what is not.

On the ground we can see maybe 4 or 5 2.4GHz Wifi access points from distant houses/buildings.
We do not have congestion or connectivity issues on the ground or connectivity issues at all on initial connect and flying at short range (several hundred feet away from controller)
The connectivity and reliability is fine here.

At 400ft. altitude we can see hundreds of Accesspoints and at some point (not weak signal) but under heavy congestion I see the connectivity just drop (Around -65 or -67 dBm signal strength).

At this point the craft goes into RTL and starts getting closer to the controller.
1-2 minutes later it reconnects and most of the time after it has already landed or is very very close.
Sometimes it NEVER reconnects EVER.

The bug I am reporting or wish to pursue investigation is on Craft to controller Wifi re-association after lost connection.

I am 100% sure it is not working like it should be.

The craft Wifi should be very aggressively trying to re-associate back to the controller (access point) after a lost association for any reason and clearly is not happening.

Just In case it could be a contributing factor I should also mention that I am running openSolo (latest release and up to date) on my Samsung Galaxy Phone in the combination.
The phone does not ever lose association to the controller (AP) or experience connectivity issues to the controller.

I can provide any logs or do further testing please let me know what I should do next.
I definitely would like to see this get resolved and would like to be helpful as possible with this.

Thanks.

Steve
 
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This is something that people (including me) experienced before Open Solo too on occasion. I do not know why the copter's wifi card basically locks up and refuses to reconnect. I do not know if it's related to surrounding wifi congestion or not. Although anecdotally, I can tell you I haven't experienced it since I started flying away from heavy wifi congestion.
 
Wouldn't a first step be to interrupt the signal in a controlled way and see if the behaviour remains?

Maybe fly out and then place the controller into a faraday cage [some metallic window screen in a cube should work] and see what happens?

Is there any chance of poking the controller to reawaken it?

Maybe it is time to more agressively pursue running newer kernels? I seem to recall reading about wireless driver issues way back on the 3.x kernel series.
 
I get this on days when I'm flying for hours for work. When this happens, sometimes a battery pull on both works. Otherwise, I need factory reset on both with repair.

I've been meaning to grab logs, but each time it happens I'm hours away from my office with no field computer to dump logs before I reset both.
 
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I get this on days when I'm flying for hours for work. When this happens, sometimes a battery pull on both works. Otherwise, I need factory reset on both with repair.

I've been meaning to grab logs, but each time it happens I'm hours away from my office with no field computer to dump logs before I reset both.

Are you using an Android device?
 
This has also happened to me in urban areas but on 3DR firmware. Turn everything off and on to fix.
The best solution has been to not ever fly in urban areas again which suits me fine :)
 
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Bummer that this appears to be a "known issue" without any fixes or fix attempts.
Not ever flying in (or off to the side of) an urban area is not a solution.
I'm easily able to re-create issue.
I'll see what I can do about getting some logs posted.
Do you have any suggestions on how to turn them on or crank up the verbosity to a useable level for this problem?
Am I going to be grabbing the logs via the Solex app? that I am now using or do I need to fetch them right off of the Solo Aircraft?
 
I'm betting you need the system logs from the Solo's i.MX6 to see any driver errors or kernel messages.
 
I'm betting you need the system logs from the Solo's i.MX6 to see any driver errors or kernel messages.

I'm looking for pointers if you have any on where which log and if verbosity has to be turned up to be useful or more useful.
I will go out and make the problem happen again and collect the logging while it does.
 
We are also talking "suburban" areas here and not massive downtown "urban" type of wifi density.
Off to the side of small city residential housing and certainly NOT over them.
 
Hmm... Need to hook up RAPTR again and get into file system again to be sure. But I think it is going to be in /var/log/messages . Could be helpful to capture total 'dmesg ' output before shutting solo down, too. Not sure what the log level is on Solo, or which tool is used. Memory ain't what it used to be.

Will get hooked up and poke about later this week if that isn't any help.
 
Thanks, please let me know when you have a chance.
When I go out to make the test flights and do it until the problem occurs I'd like to be sure I'm actually logging everything that could be needed.
And if verbosity of logging needs to be turned up I\, looking to find out where to turn it up.
 
I’ve had this happen multiple times and my home point somehow was off by 50ft and under trees and when it disconnects and is doing its RTH and it don’t reconnect the solo came down you hit the trees causing a crash!! This means my solo isn’t a good vehicle to use for my roof and gutter inspections so I’ve since decided to sell my solo because I need a more reliable vehicle which I’m now using an Xstar premium which is working fine.
 
I observed a similar situation albeit in my case, the iPhones proprietary 3DR Solo App lost wifi connection with the controller and my Solo in mid-flight . Now comes the weird thing. I noticed that one I switch off my cellular network on the iPhone, Wifi communication suddenly is stable and I have no more connection issues! This doesn’t make any sense to me, since The two networks operational modes are not related at all. But ever since then I got stable connections , even in congested areas with many 2.4 gHz Networks.
 
This seems to be a rather huge very obvious serious and very dangerous bug and I'm able to easily re-create it.
I'm not understanding how this has not been brought up discussed and fixed after all this time that it has been going on.
And nobody here seems in any hurry to work toward a fix or even discuss how to turn up the logging so We can further diagnose this.
Or am I being impatient?

It's completely the difference between this being a viable platform or a dangerous piece of poo.
I personally would have noticed this a LONG time ago had I actually been flying it.
It mostly sat on the shelf for over a year and I just now got interested in it again and instantly upgraded it to opensolo and bought
Solex for it planning to have some fun and I discover this just after a few real flight attempts.
Rather than just hovering it in front of me.
 
I lack the knowledge to push this along any further, and the parties who typically are involved in issues like this I'm sure have a ton on their plate already. Maybe more patience is needed, or maybe we can further explore poking around with what we can in the meantime to bolster what we currently know.
 
@n8lbv Do you have anything other than your phone to try? A large number of us use a tablet with no cell service and don't see this issue. Also, take your phone away from the controller (cradle) and see if that makes a difference. It could be your phone is "leaking" interference.
 
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