Cannot connect to wireless local area network (WLAN)


 
B

BSmith-DE

New member
I can't seem to connect to my local wireless area network. I have tried resetting the settings per the instructions on the wiki page located at (https://github.com/CapnBry/HeaterMeter/wiki/HeaterMeter-4.x-Software). I tried both the config.txt method as well as the gui method. I have tried rebooting several times after trying both methods. I made a backup of the original config.txt file just in case as well and retried.

I feel as though I know where things go wrong with the gui method. When I get to the point in STEP 5 where you hit apply and save, I lose connectivity to the HM every time and lose connectivity. I switched to my WLAN and tried both 192.168.201.1 and 192.168.200.1 to see if I can ping or connect with no luck.

I am not sure what to do from this point. I am likely missing something simple, but trying to administer is, well, difficult. Any suggestions? I am almost thinking about re-imagining the SD card.
 
Could you be editing the settings for the LAN/Ethernet connection rather than the wireless WiFi connection. I could see that dropping your link the moment you hit save.

What is the ip address you get when you discover your device using the http://heatermeter.com/devices/ web page?

Mike
 
I am following the instructions on the wiki. I am definitely editing the wifi. I have retried about 10x's now. When I press apply and save I get the error: The connection to the server has timed out.
Here are the steps I am taking:
Network>Wifi>Scan>Choose My Home WLAN SSID and Join Network>Enter my SSID Password from my Home WLAN>Submit>At this point I am at the Interface configuration-General Setup and press Save and apply and I get "The connection to the server has timed out" message and it's game over from there. I have to reboot the HM and browse to it with 192.168.201.1 to access it.

I don't get a connection when I browse to heatermeter.com/devices. I can only connect to HM by using the IP 192.168.201.1 in a browser. This is really difficult trying to configure this thing on a telephone. I am really at a loss for words. I have been messing with this software now for 4 hours and can't get it connected to my home wireless LAN. :( I am really beginning to wonder if I have wasted my money and time. If I can't monitor from a friends house, this was a complete waste. Any suggestions, questions, or comments are very welcome as I must be missing something.
 
What type of SD card do you have?

I just built a new 4.2.4 HeaterMeter, loaded up a Sony 70MB / second SD card with the software, and never could get the Raspberry Pi to write to it. I was using an Ethernet connection to the HeaterMeter and not WiFi. Later gave up and purchased a cheap SanDisk 15MB / second SD card and things worked great.
 
Did you shut down the Heatermeter disconnect the Lan cable then reboot? As I remember you cant connect to it wireless if it is plugged in to the Lan
 
Wireless adapter specs

I have tried 2 different wireless USB adapters and am getting the same results. So I tend to think it's not the actual adapters. Here are the names and models of both adapters that I have tried:
Trendnet TEW-648UMB Wireless N 150MbPS (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B004D41ECW/tvwb-20)
Edimax EW-7811Un 150Mbps (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B003MTTJOY/tvwb-20)

I also have had 0 luck with an ethernet connection. I don't know if it's normal or not, but when I plug in the ethernet cable from my router and fire up HM the screen just continually blinks/flashes on and off at about 2 second intervals. During that time, attempts to browse to 192.168.201.1, 192.168.200.1, http://openwrt.local all fail. Is my ethernet card bad too?

I want to clarify that I do have connectivity when using HM/LM when it boots up. I can get to the home screen, login to it, etc. I just can't connect it to my home LAN/WLAN so I can view & administer it from any devices on my WLAN or further, off-site remotely.

To answer the other current question, I have rebooted this thing about 50+ times so far. I have tried wiping my SD card and reimaging also. However, it seems that HM somehow still holds some configurations. I mean when I re-imaged the SD card with a fresh image from Bryan Mayland's site, my old login credentials have still been retained and must be used. I read something somewhere about a "no restore" option, but I couldn't figure out how or where I would edit this.
 
I didn't see your Trendnet listed on the wifi adapters page so I would use the Edimax. How many network ports does your Heatermeter have?

Wifi adapters https://github.com/CapnBry/HeaterMeter/wiki/Wireless-Adapters

Below is how to edit the file using a text editor that is on the sd card after you reimage

How do I prevent config restoration?

If you've messed up your configuration so badly that your device become inaccessible, you probably don't want that configuration restored when you reflash the SD card. To prevent the restore operation, add the flag norestore to the kernel command line (Requires LinkMeter v8 or above). This can be done after flashing the SD card, eject the card, then reinsert it and you should see a small FAT filesystem which contains a cmdline.txt file. Open this in any text editor and append norestore to the existing line:

dwc_otg.lpm_enable=0 root=/dev/mmcblk0p2 rootfstype=ext4 root wait no restore


Configuration backup will still occur when the norestore option is specified on the command line.

https://github.com/CapnBry/HeaterMeter/wiki/Configuration-Autobackup
 
Many strange things have happened. I have now spent nearly 20 hours trying to get this setup to work as intended.

I tried the "no restore" re-image. When I used that image I couldn't even get HM to act as an Access Point. In other words, I couldn't even connect to it with 192.168.201.1.

From there I re-imaged with the original image. I went back to trying different things with different wifi adapters to try and get the thing to obtain and ID for my wireless network. No such luck. I have tried the GUI, I have tried editing the config.txt file and I always get to the same point where things fail...I press Apply & Submit on step 5 of the wiki and my connection times out with the error "The connection to the server has timed out". After this, the heatermeter AP goes dead so one would think that it's changing over the wireless LAN that it was told to. From that point I have to recycle the power/reboot to get back to the original heatermeter AP to start over again.

Next, I went and bought and tried a completely different Micro SD card and adapter. I wrote the image to the disk. I edited the config.txt file as instructed. No success. After that I went to the GUI and went through the steps on the wiki again only to get to the same error message "The connection to the server has timed out." Only this time just after the page times out and I again lost the heatermeter WIFI AP, I noticed that the HM/LM was displaying a new IP address which I have never seen before. Low and behold, it obtained an IP address. Temporary Success. Guess what happens next? I shutdown, swapped out adapters thinking that retaining the original Micro SD card I will be fine. WRONG!! I never was able to connect to my home WLAN again with that Micro SD card or either adapter. It gets even better, I go to the store again and get another fresh Micro SD card with a new adapter thinking this is all I need to do to get and keep this thing working as intended. WRONG!! I just can't get this thing to fetch an IP on my home WLAN. I am on the verge of giving up. If I can't connect to this thing remotely, what's the point?

Both replacement cards purchased were SanDisk 16GB cards.

Also, during these trials I tried to administer the changes via Ethernet as well with no luck (BTW I finally got the Ethernet LAN connection going). Does anyone have ANY suggestions or any method that I could do via SSH? I understand the bash shell enough to make edits with VI. I am running out of options and I can't just keep buying and trying new Micro SD cards and adapters and taking $13 shots in the dark. At the moment I am really kicking my self in the behind for swapping out the adapters when I finally had this thing connected to my network. PLEASE HELP.
 
Is there something non-standard about your SSID? Longer than 32 characters, special characters, etc? Not sure why you're having so much trouble with this.

What's your wireless encryption method? wep, wpa, wpa2?

From the command line, you can use the wifi-client util:

Code: 
wifi-client myhomewifi my_super_secret_password
 
Nothing non-standard with my SSID. It's 2 words each with a single capital letter and a space in between...."Permanent Vacation". WPA2 for the encryption method. The crazy thing is that I actually had it connected to my network until I shut down and swapped adapters. I don't know what gives here. I am also considering changing my SSID to eliminate the caps and the space. Bought a wired controller for my son's Xbox one and the analog jack for his headphones doesn't work either. SMH :( :\ :'( (and it works with his other controller). I am so sick of technology right now. I could have smoked 2 boston butts in the time I have spent researching and trying different things. Going to fool with the code for a couple minutes and call it a day for today. Frustrated beyond belief today.
 
Something else to note. These little USB wifi adapters wont work with 5ghz networking. Do you know if you're running 2.4ghz and/or 5ghz from your router/AP?
 
I just tried changing my SSID on my router from "Permanent Vacation" to "skynet" also. No luck connecting to my wifi. I have tried 4 different SD cards in combination with 2 USB wifi adapters. I am about to call it quits and see if anyone will trade up with me. I have spent 20+ hours trying to connect to a WIFI network. I am pretty sick over this.
 
this just worked for me..........change the channel your router is on, usually channel 6, to anything from 1 to 11. Mine was 6 changed to 11 and we're good to go!!
 
Still can't get connected to my wifi. I am wondering if this has anything to do with it. What do I need to do with e2fsck??

root@OpenWrt:/etc/config# dmesg | grep mmc
[ 0.000000] Kernel command line: dma.dmachans=0x7f35 bcm2708_fb.fbwidth=656 bcm2708_fb.fbheight=416 bcm2708.boardrev=0xe bcm2708.serial=0x20bb87eb smsc95xx.macaddr=B8:27:EB:BB:87:EB bcm2708_fb.fbswap=1 sdhci-bcm2708.emmc_clock_freq=250000000 vc_mem.mem_base=0x1ec00000 vc_mem.mem_size=0x20000000 dwc_otg.lpm_enable=0 root=/dev/mmcblk0p2 rootfstype=ext4 rootwait
[ 0.670816] Registered led device: mmc0::
[ 0.672057] mmc0: SDHCI controller on BCM2708_Arasan [platform] using PIO
[ 0.673932] mmc0: BCM2708 SDHC host at 0x20300000 DMA 2 IRQ 77
[ 0.688823] Waiting for root device /dev/mmcblk0p2...
[ 0.780680] mmc0: problem reading SD Status register.
[ 0.785461] mmc0: error -84 whilst initialising SD card
[ 0.941895] mmc0: problem reading SD Status register.
[ 0.953431] mmc0: new high speed SDHC card at address 0007
[ 0.955841] mmcblk0: mmc0:0007 SD16G 14.4 GiB
[ 0.959452] mmcblk0: p1 p2 p4
[ 1.085322] EXT4-fs (mmcblk0p2): warning: mounting unchecked fs, running e2fsck is recommended
[ 1.093510] EXT4-fs (mmcblk0p2): mounted filesystem without journal. Opts: (null)
[ 4.348635] EXT4-fs (mmcblk0p2): re-mounted. Opts: (null)
[ 34.384769] EXT4-fs (mmcblk0p4): warning: mounting unchecked fs, running e2fsck is recommended
[ 34.391932] EXT4-fs (mmcblk0p4): mounted filesystem without journal. Opts: (null)
 
Ok......for now I cautiously say I found the resolution to the problem after what seems to be an endless search. I found a thread entitled "Heater Meter (R Pi) loses wireless config on every reboot" at http://tvwbb.com/showthread.php?65476-Heater-Meter-(R-Pi)-loses-wireless-config-on-every-reboot. The instructions to delete /etc/uci-defaults/linkmeter for the time being have solved the issue(s) that I have had with connecting to my wireless network. Like I mentioned I say it cautiously, but HOORAY!
(Now I can try to figure out how to get the alarms to alert my telephone and or email - which so far has been unsuccessful.)
 
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