SOLVED! - Pi 2 Wifi problems with a Nexus 7

[Paul_Sengupta]

Hi Vic, can you try moving the tablet away from the Pi, see if it connects at a certain distance? Me me that was over about 1.2 or 1.3 metres.

I have an engineering software build where the Wifi changes are reverted and that works fine, so Lee and I are going to experiment to try to see what has caused this problem. I would suggest the next software update will fix this. 

[Vic]

Hi Paul, yes I initially achieved a connection from around 2 metres.

From the front bedroom of my house (in Essex) with the PAW unit sitting on the windowsill, SD was showing ADSB targets as far away as over Manston at FL300, some 40NM away..

I moved the PAW to the back bedroom to get a better line of sight to the West but kept the Nexus 7 in the other room, the two were around 20 ft apart and separated by a stud wall but remained reliably connected. 

It's achieving the initial connection that I am still having problems with there's definatel;y something quirky with the wifi in the N7, Google has made several fixes to this over the course of Android builds for this machine.

I am using a Cyanogenmod ROM on my N7 based on KitKat to acheive something near a usable speed (though SD, once loaded runs perfectly)

[Vic]

Flew with the N7 and the PAW yesterday and it was a non-starter, the unit  constantly disconnecting every minute, with messages in Skydemon saying Lost GPS connection or lost connection to the butterfly. It was also a pain to get the initial WIFI  connection to the PAW from the N7.

I also tried from my phone (cheap Chinese Android clone) and this was stable, connected easily and Skydemon worked well.

[Admin]

Flew with the N7 and the PAW yesterday and it was a non-starter, the unit  constantly disconnecting every minute, with messages in Skydemon saying Lost GPS connection or lost connection to the butterfly. It was also a pain to get the initial WIFI  connection to the PAW from the N7.

I also tried from my phone (cheap Chinese Android clone) and this was stable, connected easily and Skydemon worked well.

I think there is a problem with the Nexus and wifi mode g
We reconfigured for mode b, and the problem went away for Paul Sengupta

Thx
Lee

[SteveN]

Rock solid on my my Nexus 7 (2013)  Android 6.0.1 but that will be a different O/S version to a 2012 device.

[exfirepro]

Hi Steve,

It was also never a problem on my 2013 Nexus 7, and I believe Paul also had one which connected fine. It was just his 2012 model which seemed to have the problems when Lee upgraded the WiFi to 'g'. As Lee said, he reverted to 'b' in an 'Engineering' build of the software which seems to have proved this. I understand Lee is working on a solution.

Regards

Peter

[JCurtis]

I have a Nexus 7 Gen 1, not sure if it's vintage, I can loan to Lee for testing if that helps?

[Fozzy]

Has anyone seen this same issue but with the IPad mini, both yesterday and today, the IPad dropped the Wifi connection to the PAW and the only way I could re-connect was to jump into the IPad settings and rejoin the AP.

Regards

Paul

[Keithvinning]

Hi Paul

Sorry to sound like an old record but are you sure that the power supply and lead you are using is giving 5.25V and 2Amps to the Pi. The lack of this accounts for a very high percentage of drop outs. If this is OK then it needs further comment.

[Admin]

Hi Paul

Just to follow up, were you using the power lead supplied ?
This has caught a few people out, it needs to be a high capacity 20 AWG power connection

Thx
Lee

[Fozzy]

Ill get a 0.5m 20AWG JuicEBitz cable ordered and report back.

[pioneer]

Hi I am a non technical newbe running PAW on a Nexus 7 2012, had initial problems with disconnecting, problem was intermittent power lead, changed lead and now running ok .
Flew friday and today with no problems.
Using software as supplied with the latest kit.
Now just looking for pin outs to connect to Funkewerk Transponder.
Thanks for a nice piece of kit.
Brian

[Moffrestorer]

Hi Brian,

The info you require is a bit spread around this forum, unfortunately.

Regarding connecting PAW to your Funke transponder to give ADS-B Out. You will need to use a USB -RS232 converter cable. This must be "true" RS232, +/- 12V, and NOT the "TTL" cable variant which is only 0-5V signalling.

For pin outs see http://docs.fasvig.info/ADS-B/Funke_TRT800A-H_connection_uncertified_GPS.pdf

Also see later posts on General Discussion" forum thread, entitled "ADSB out from Funke TRT 800H (when should my plane "show on another?")".

Regards,

Chris
(HAC member)

[Vic]

Bit more information on this which I am still experiencing to a degree on the N7 which definitely appears to be the bad boy in all of this.

I ran the Pilotaware on a Pi 3 official power supply following the previous suggestions.

The N7 is still reticent to connect to the PA WAP but eventually does so after about 30 seconds 'awaiting IP allocation' or similar. Accessing the web server part of the PAW is very slow in responding. The Skydemon connection appeared to hold up well though. 

If then, with the N7 still connected, I connect with my phone, the N7 disconnects in Skydemon (wifi stays connected though), unable to reconnect to 'FLARM', the web server is inaccessible and the phone's use on Skydemon with Flarm is also flaky with no web server response.  The only way to resolve this is to reset the PAW.

On resetting the PAW, the phone connects fine and I left Skydemon running stable for an hour seeing ADSB targets. As soon as I try connecting the N7 though, the phone is dropped out of Nav in skydemon.

I believe it should be no problem at all connecting multiple devices to the PAW?  Hope this helps anyone with diagnostics or maybe the next release will solve the issue.

Vic

[Admin]

Hi Vic,

Which version of PilotAware are you running, I will be uploading a version which reverts the WiFi to mode b, rather than mode g, this seems to resolve these issues on the Nexus
But just want to confirm what you are using.

Thx
Lee