WiFi module settings corrupted?

[tastewar]

So I left for work today, and my DigiX based device was working ok. When I came home, it was not. I couldn't get it to connect to WiFi. When I connected to the module from my phone via the module's AP functionality, and looked at the settings, I could see that the network name it was supposed to connect to had been corrupted. I believe that the first four characters were correct, but after that appeared to be a single Chinese character. I deleted that, put in the rest of the name, saved, rebooted, and it worked fine.

I think I recall other "sightings" of wifi settings getting messed up. Is there any understanding of what might be going on there?

[tastewar]

Well, I have to report that my device has been running fine now, for weeks (although it is only "stable" because of Watchdog timer resets :-/ ), but this particular problem has recurred. Again, the network name it's connecting to was corrupt, with the first four characters OK, but then some garbage characters after that.

This board has been very quiet recently...

[digistump]

I haven't had any other reports of this or seen it in any of my long running units. We have some customers using the units for continuous use - though most use it in client instead of server mode.

Do you have two units? And if so are you seeing it on both?

If not, send me an email, and maybe we can get you a second one to test and see if it is just a faulty unit, or an actual bug in the wifi module.

[tastewar]

I do have two, so I can try swapping the other one in and see if it suffers the same fate. I could swear that I read a very similar comment in the forum from before mine, but I couldn't find it when I went looking for it again.

My application *is* a client-side application, too. The thing I wonder the most about is if there's a possibility of doing the hardware (pin106) wifi module reset at an inopportune time...

[tastewar]

Reporting back on this issue. I have had my second board in "production" now for about a week (a little less, in fact) and it has apparently suffered a similar fate. Instead of just corrupting 4 bytes of the network name it was connecting to in station mode, it appears to have done an entire factory reset. The mode was AP only (when it had been both) and the name of the network it was creating was the HF-LPB name when it had been the DigiX name when I configured it last. Baud rate was 115,200 when I had set it to 57,600.

So, two boards seeing the same issue. My strong suspicion is that it has to do with resetting the WiFi module.

[tastewar]

The next day, the same symptom occurred -- my application was not communicating with the internet. I try connecting to it via its AP mode, but since it restarts every 8 seconds due to Watchdog, that doesn't work so well. So I load up a simple app on the board with just setup (to disable watchdog) and no loop, and then I can connect to the built-in AP and bring up the web interface. The main page comes up fine, but when I click on the "page" names on the left side menu, the browser just spins its wheels. I could not make any changes. It appeared that the client mode was still set to connect to the correct wifi network, but there was no IP address. Perhaps the password was corrupted this time? I even tried the factoryRestore sketch, which as far as I could tell did nothing this time (I've had it work in the past).

So, I plugged in my older DigiX board, ran the same simple sketch, was able to access the settings just fine and get it re-connected to wifi as a client. The older board (my original Kickstarter purchased one) is running OK for the time being, but I suspect something is not right here.

[tastewar]

Old board has been back in service since 4/28. At 7:01 this morning, it stopped connecting to the internet. I just got around to checking it out now, and it appears (again) to have lost all its configuration settings. Had to re-enter everything.

[digistump]

So I'm completely stumped - which isn't something I like to admit or be.

I agree that it seems to have to do with the resets somehow corrupting the settings - lots of DigiXs out there and no reports of this corruption (or maybe one other somewhere on this forum?). Hundreds of DigiXs are being used in 24/7 deployments (we have a few business customers using them in products for many months now) - and no reports of the disconnects when using it as client side and at least several people are using watchdog but I don't think they are seeing nearly the number of resets you are.

Any idea about how often the watchdog is triggering?

Have you done any tests on other WiFi networks to see if the connection was still lost/watchdog reset needed as often? I'm wondering the frequency of resets is related to the network/router/etc some how (granted it is still an issue with the module).

Is the second one totally dead as far as WiFi goes? If so, feel free to email us (support@digistump.com) about that.

[tastewar]

Thanks for the response; I will try to gather more data.