Too many Wi-Fi's

When in a place with 50+ networks, it is not possible to see all as it might be further down the list.
The list should only show the SSID name and not one per MAC address.

Also if I know the network SSID, it should be possible to just enter the name and password without selecting from list only. Maybe a setting for advanced options (for hidden SSID too)

Same as this: Setting up hidden Wifi :sweat_smile:

It seems that if the device cannot see the configured network (setup in /sd/config/) it WILL NOT connect to it and goes back into AP mode. (!?!?!?)
This happens if the network is not among the first 50 visible networks.

That’s expected. If the WiFi doesn’t work (or in your case not found for some reason), the configuration mode is started. This mode is limited to the first 10 minutes after a device starts, so a temporary problem with the WiFi doesn’t cause the device to be “stuck in configuration mode” as it will resume normal operation after 10 minutes.

Now I guess the problem is why you cannot find that WiFi and why it doesn’t seem to work even if manually configured. Is that 5GHz? Do you know which channel the network is on?

I have a mobile AP near 4 devices. I have changed the wirelss config file to the correct SSID and password, but when rebooting the devices all go to “Loading…” screen and into AP mode.
It seems that the mobile AP is not found because the device can “only” see 50 APs - and my mobile AP is not in this list. (it is maybe found as number 51 or 70 ?)
None of the 4 devices connects to the mobile AP.

Yesterday the area only had 10 active WiFi APs and the devices just jumped on my mobile AP - but after today 50+ AP have been turned on.

Which channel do you use? Is that 2.4Ghz or 5GHz?

Is it only supporting 2.4GHz - no 5G
I can’t see he channel from here…

If the exact same mobile AP worked previously, the channel used shouldn’t be an issue. I searched around and one of the possible answers was that maybe the AP is too close to the devices (!?). Although I have some doubts that this is the reason.

I also couldn’t find any hint that there’s some kind of limit. Especially if you configured the WiFi statically. I understand that searching might not find all of them during configuration, as there might be timeouts involved while waiting for all SSID broadcasts, but a statically configured WiFi client should not have this issue. I’ll keep searching.

Do you have any way to connect the device to Ethernet, so it’s possible to debug from remote?

It is not possible to connect using a cable - the device has no Ethernet port.

It seems that if there are too many wifi’s, the device will not connect no matter if it is setup in the config file and no matter if the SSID is hidden or not.

Is it possible to setup 2-3 static wifi’s so the device will try to connect to one at a time? At the moment I have 3 working wifi APs but it seems that the device keeps disconnecting and I have manually connect to them and set it up again.

Have a look here: Multiple WiFis pre-configured (I’ll add that to the documentation soon as well)

It should then try all configured WiFis from first to last once it detects that networking doesn’t work.

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  1. Using this setup will it try all the all the networks again, if it suddenly looses the active connection?
  2. Is it possible to see what network is the active? Is that the content in the text field “SSID / Accesspoint name”?
  1. It should try one after the other when it restarts networking. This happens if there is either no connection or the current connection doesn’t work (repeated http probe request timeout). If you have a WiFi network the system can connect to, but then it blackholes all traffic, the device will repeatedly connect to that same network. There’s no dynamic weighting to avoid this at the moment.

  2. Not directly. The content in the device configuration editor is based on the wireless file’s content. The only way to see which WiFi is used is by command line. iwconfig should show the ESSID.

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