Total failure of WiFi

[austere shoal]

Hey folks

In 10.22 I converted my Ender 6 to klipper and was quite happy with it.

I did choose a BTT Pico and the raspberry pad 5 with a CM4 8GB Lite module as my hardware of choice.

I haven't used the printer for about a month and 2 days ago, I wanted to print something. No network available. I restarted the whole printer without success. It seemed that the dhcpd got stuck as I spotted a message while booting.

Updating the system was impossible and all the modules were marked as invalid except system.

Long story short, I removed the microsd, copied my printer configs and did a clean install of mainsailOS. That's where the misery started.

WiFi worked with some hiccups. I let a ping -t run on my computer. From time to time there was no response for exact 5 ping-timeout cycles. I added the hub functionality in /boot/config.txt and did a reboot. Normal behaviour beside the timeouts from time to time. I downloaded the display driver, installed it and after a reboot the WiFi stopped working. I plugged a keyboard to the pad 5 and found out the WiFi still works. I can spot my ssid but not connect to it.

I changed to another SD card without success. I removed the GPIO power (sometimes a undervolting occured) and connected a original raspi4 power supply via usb-c. Didn't help either. I removed the whole pad 5 from my printed housing. I installed a standard raspian with the exact same behaviour. Once the display driver is installed dhcpd stops working. WiFi ssid is visible but no connection. I removed the blob file for the display but the WiFi remained unfunctional.

I am completely out of ideas and hope to find some new ones here.

Thanks in advance

[keen dagger]

I can only guess here, because I own no Dsiplay for the pi. But could it be possible that the display driver isnt made for Bullseye and interferes with the kernel?

Maybe we could figure it out together. So please leave a Link to used hardware and the howto/docs where its setup is described.

Other than that, pis are not that great in wifi connection in generall. 🤷‍♂️

[austere shoal]

Well since BTT is official sponsor of klipper I thought the hardware should be known. My bad.

https://biqu.equipment/de/products/bigtreetech-raspberry-pad-5

This is the hardware.

https://cdn.shopifycdn.net/s/files/1/0633/9480/8029/files/BIGTREETECH_Raspberry_pad_5_V1.0_Manual_34bbbf85-dc0f-4759-990c-4bb6e3de5b0f.pdf?v=1649471497

This is the manual with the linked driver for the display

[austere shoal]

It worked a month without problems. Just after the pause it suddenly stopped working

[keen dagger]

What are our options to get access?

But, we have a relationship as partners to BTT also, but we dont recieve every hardware piece 😉

[austere shoal]

No hard feelings 😅 I just thought by raspberry pad 5 the hardware should have been known

[keen dagger]

So what are our options to get some terminal access? I have to see whats going on there...

Best would be you configure it to your likings or intentions and we take a look after it why it wont connect to wifi

[austere shoal]

Well, I can set up a fresh install from pi imager and then connect the pad 5 to a DMZ via ethernet cable. So you'd have access to the pad 5. Downside to this would be that I am not able to observe what you're doing

[keen dagger]

No you dont have to grant access to me in person, but I need some outputs from commands

[austere shoal]

Ah. Let me prepare the pad 5 then

[austere shoal]

So, in about 2-3 minutes I have a mainsailOS 1.0.1 64bit from scratch

and already the first dropped packages...while being idle

[keen dagger]

Ok, then please iw wlan0 get power_save

[austere shoal]

Power save: off

[keen dagger]

Thats good.

[austere shoal]

Sorry, putty dropped the connection because I got a timeout

[keen dagger]

Then if you can recover try to use sonar

You could aslo try to switch to 32bit and see if it gets better, maybe the 64bit version of raspi os has issues there

[austere shoal]

I tried that too without luck.

SOnar is not intended to run as pi

Reporting to log and exiting

[keen dagger]

Ah, no, use mansail and edit the sonar.conf ( next to all other config files )

and set enable: true

Reboot after

If that doesnt help in the long run I dont know where to look for

It is possible that the location of the printer has downsides, Pi Wifi Antennas are more or less crap

[austere shoal]

Well the display driver isn't installed right now. after installing theres no network available anymore. And as I wrote: It worked a month without problem in exact the same spot, setup and nothing changed xD

[keen dagger]

Ok, seems I missed that. Could you see the console then at boot time?

Maybe if you install the screen driver and making a video of the console spits out something useful

[austere shoal]

Yes. After installing the driver the screen on the pad 5 works with boot time console. Thats where I spotted the "a start job is running for dhcpcd on all interfaces"

[keen dagger]

Ok, then try that if you could access the pi then by using eth instead of wifi we could see with journalctl -u dhcpcd.service why it fails

[austere shoal]

I enabled sonar and rebooted the pad 5. Now I'm running a full update on all modules. Then I'm going to install the display driver and if it fails I will film the boot time console and try the journalctl command

It seems that sonar at last helped with the dropped packages. Since the reboot with sonar enabled I had no package loss with my ping -t

[keen dagger]

It simply pings the gateway in a defined timeframe to ensure it cant go to powersave mode or missing beacon signals from the AP

If its get lost it reassociates Wifi and restarts dhcpcd

Its hacky first aid but a possible solution xD

[austere shoal]

I wont judge if it works.

https://datasheets.raspberrypi.com/cmio/dt-blob-disp1-cam1.bin

I guess you cant really find out if these a compatible with bullseye?

Thats the bin needed as dt-blob.bin on the boot partition

[keen dagger]

Since they come from raspberry itself and they telling you to use bullseye in the Docs of the screen it should work

[austere shoal]

hmm...moonraker cant connect to klipper....did I miss something when backing my config up?...

anyway Im installing the display now. I can have a look at that later

and network access is dead

[keen dagger]

its dhcpcd not dhcpd

also show ip a please

[austere shoal]

My bad. Sorry

I guess the advertised pi4 verified power supply of the Pico board isn't that good as they tell xD

[keen dagger]

That could be an Issue already, wondering, why you cant acces...

it says a ip is assigned but network is down wtf?....

[austere shoal]

I tried yesterday with a original power supply from another raspi4 without success as well

But don't forget: the ship sinks with the installed display driver xD

Uhm

[keen dagger]

https://github.com/bigtreetech/Raspberry-Pad/issues/4

[austere shoal]

Nice one. Sounded good but it's about a wired connection. And hardly connected to my weird case.

As I have a working connection until the display gets active

Well thank you for your time. I'm going to bed now.

[keen dagger]

I asked in the team, 2 of them own that pad and werent able to reproduce. Even with the blob from the link, but in config.txt is an entry for cm4 named otg_usb=1 comment that out and set the appropriate dwc entry for the board also get rid of that undervoltage warnings, possible its enough sag to cutoff the wifi chip

[austere shoal]

Thanks for the effort. What exactly is the appropriate dwc entry? I dont know much about raspi and linux to be honest. Mostly google wisdom... following the BTT manual for setting up the Pad5 I have to add "dtoverlay=dwc2,dr_mode=host" to /boot/config.txt

[keen dagger]

Yes thats the right one