Odd WIFI problem

FWIW, I had a board that, no matter what, wouldn’t take a flash. Everything went fine and it looked like it would work fine but it never worked.
I have a dozen boards and the rest all worked fine so I knew it was a bad board and I chucked it in the garbage.
The symptoms were similar to yours except I couldn’t get it to connect to the router at all.

That was the problem. Installed it in the shop, works perfectly. Got it up and working with LEDfx as well.
Guess I’ll be using those other 3 boards for another project.
Thanks for all the help.

I am having the exact same problem. Flash, works perfectly. Unplug USB and move over to power supply… won’t connect to wifi. Nothing but Vin and GND connected. Wtf

What ESP board? The ones I was using before were a WROOM knockoff.
The actual Espressif board worked.

You might try using the USB cable that works with a separate 5V USB wall adapter, to see if it’s a computer powered issue vs the USB power connection.

There have been reports of bad isolation diodes on some boards causing the 5V Vin connections to fail and preventing power up. You can also check the 3.3V pin to see if you’re getting power when connected via Vin.

So it’s a board off Amazon. Link here: https://a.co/d/48PqTlf

Anyway, I think the real problem was something power related bc it worked fine until I powered it from a buck converter plugged into my 12v supply. Of course I dialed down the voltage to 5.0v before plugging it in. But for
Whatever reason after that, the ESP chip would get pretty hot (enough didn’t want to hold it) even when powered via USB. Not sure what was up with that. It also will no longer connect via serial to my computer. When I try to reflash it, the LED blinks but it fails to connect.

Any thoughts would be great but for now I think it’s toast

Very possibly fried the onboard voltage regulator.

Too hot to touch is a bad sign for electronics…

Well, just tried again with another nodemcu, works perfectly. Go figure. Guess first was just a dud

Hi all,
I’m facing the same issues here. Flashing WLED to the board works with no error. Starting the GUI over the network from the intaller works but after the first reset/reboot, I cannot reconnect to the board.
Tried everything mentioned above regarding router settings.

Here ist the new point to add to the discussion:
When using my phones Mobile Hotspot as WiFi network for installer and final WiFi network, I don’t have any issues with the same board. I can repower it and it immediately connects to the Hotspot WiFi network.

I’ve tested three boards and only one of them connects to my router. The other two ones only connect to my Mobile Hotspot.

Any ideas on this?

best regards

Stephan

Are you sure it’s not just getting a new IP from your router? I would set a static IP reservation in your router.

Hi Jinx,

thank you for your reponse.
I’ve tried static IP but it doesn’t work for the two problematic devices.

The one device that shows up in the router network does this even without static IP.

:frowning:

regards

Stephan

Are you using an Esp32 or 8266?

Can you connect to the board if you don’t connect any lights to it? Just power the controller.

Hi Jinx,

Are you using an Esp32 or 8266?
I’m using an ESP32 board.

don’t connect any lights to it? Just power the controller.
That’s what I did.

  • The controller was powered via USB from the PC.
  • WLED was installed via the browser
  • WiFi was configured via the installer in the browser.
  • Connecting to the WLED WebUI works via the specified WiFi network.
  • Closing the installer app in the browser forces the board to reboot
    => WLED web GUI is no more reachable even after repower…

regards

Stephan

Is it possible you’re having similar problems to: Boot problems ?

Hi divsys,

thx for your hint.
I don’t think that my problem is similar to the one described because everything works a expected when using my cell phone as WiFi hotspot.
Here, the device shows up even after reboot.
Based on this I’m guessing, that the issue is somehow related to my router but I don’t have a clue what it is.

1 Board connects to my home WiFi after reset.
2 Boards don’t connect after reset.

All Boards work with my Phone HotSpot.
I’ve tried fixed IP as the 2 problematic boards show up directly after flashing but they do not show up after reboot.

I’ve also disabled the fixed IP for the working board but that also didn’t change anything.

regards

Stephan

What brand/model of router are you using?

SNoethan,
What exact board are you using?

Router: FRITZ!Box 7590
Board: ESP32 NodeMCU Module WLAN WiFi Dev Kit C Development Board with CP2102, 38 pins

Latest finding after trying some more things:

It might be related to my WiFi setup using PLC adapters as WiFi range extenders. When I disable WiFi on the range extenders and connect the ESP32 boards directly to the FritzBox Wifi everything seems to work. WiFi credentials are the same all over the WiFi setup and no other devices so far have shown issues with the extended WiFi.

I’ll do some more investigations and share every new finding here to spread the info.

br

Stephan

p.s.: So far NO clue why the problems only show up with two out of three ESP32 boards.

I read that some ESPs might have issues.
https://kno.wled.ge/basics/compatible-controllers/
“it should also be mentioned that some ESP32-C3 boards (so-called C3 mini V1.0.0) are still being sold on the market where WLAN does not work properly.”

I ended up buying the Espressif controller and it worked perfectly. The other 3 I had (WROOM) clones did not.