New Wi-Fi Frustration

[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