New Wi-Fi Frustration

[BryceJ]

I tried to access Moode today from my iPhone but it wouldn't work. This is from a saved link on the desktop that has worked for a long time and as recently as a couple of days ago. 

I did some experimenting and found that I could access Moode by using the IP address, but not the hostname. Frustrating. Then just for fun I changed from my 5GHz SSID to my 2.4GHz SSID. Now I can access Moode by hostname without issue. The SSIDs are provided by a standard Wi-Fi router about 3 feet from me, so it shouldn't be a range or interference issue.  I am sure this has nothing to do with Moode, and is most likely the result of some Microsoft update or other. This does, however, throw into question my understanding of Wi-Fi and networks.

[Tim Curtis]

My experience with one of the newer dual-band WiFi Routers, an ASUS RT-AC88U, was not good. It would often behave just like you describe and refuse to resolve host names on one or the other band. This to me suggests bugs in the Router firmware. My clients are Mac's and IOS's.

I finally shelved it because of its unreliable dual-band operation and reverted back to my old RT-N66U with an old Merlin firmware. No issues with this Router :-)

-Tim

[mikelub66]

I tried to access Moode today from my iPhone but it wouldn't work. This is from a saved link on the desktop that has worked for a long time and as recently as a couple of days ago. 

I did some experimenting and found that I could access Moode by using the IP address, but not the hostname. Frustrating. Then just for fun I changed from my 5GHz SSID to my 2.4GHz SSID. Now I can access Moode by hostname without issue. The SSIDs are provided by a standard Wi-Fi router about 3 feet from me, so it shouldn't be a range or interference issue.  I am sure this has nothing to do with Moode, and is most likely the result of some Microsoft update or other. This does, however, throw into question my understanding of Wi-Fi and networks.

I have 4 raspberry pi's with MoodeAudio: 2 wired and 2 wireless. I use BubbleDS to control the Pi's. I also noticed that in BubbleDS the wireless raspberry pi's vanished after 1 day of inactivity. Sometimes these raspberry pi's are also inaccessible through the browser (on IP-address). The only way to get them back is by rebooting the pi's.

Because I shutdown my Wifi every night, I thought this was causing these connection issues. But even with continuous WiFi the raspberry pi's are losing the connection after an certain time of inactivity.

I effectively solved this problem with a crontab: a daily script (@ 6:15) which restarts the Raspberry Pi's, just 15 minutes after the WiFi is re-enabled.

I changed 3 things:

(1) Cron in Moode Audio is disabled by default. Change the startup (/etc/rc.local) script by adding a extra line for starting cron during startup.

Code:

...

/usr/bin/udisks-glue > /dev/null 2>&1
/var/www/command/worker.php > /dev/null 2>&1

# start cron
/etc/init.d/cron start

exit 0

(2) Create a cron script for user pi on the unix prompt with command:

Code:

crontab -e

Then in Nano, add a crontab that restarts the Pi @ 6:15 every day with:

Code:

...

# m h  dom mon dow   command
15 6 * * * sudo /sbin/shutdown -r now

Save the crontab. The crontab is saved into /var/spool/cron/crontabs/pi.

(3) Restart the Pi.

This is working perfectly for me: no more lost pi's.

Still i am a (L)unix noob so any suggestions/modifications are more then welcome.

Best regards, Mike

[Tim Curtis]

Hi Mike,

Vanishing WiFi Pi's is definitely not normal and IME most likely due to Router bugs.

My Router is an older RT-N66U dual-band with Merlin firmware. I have 5 WiFi Pi's of various models and one Eth connected Pi and for the most part they are on 7/24/365. I use 2 of them for development and they often get rebooted but the other 4 are my stability Pi's and they just stay on all the time, often playing music. They run either the current production release of moOde or a stable development version.

My newer AC88U Router however was very unreliable on the 2.4G band and would often drop Pi's from the network. It's been moved to the "bad hardware" box.

-Tim