Not saving wifi credentials

[bbkiwi]

Hi @con-f-use and @cnlohr

I've been trying the basic example made by make project (Im in dev) with make clean erase initdefault burn burnweb the ESP8266 (nodemcu v1) comes up with an AP and in the gui I connect to my home wifi no problem. However when I reset it usually tries to connect to the AP again and I have to use the gui again. If examine top of flash 0x3FE000 with echo -ne "fr4186112\t128" | netcat -u -w 1 192.168.1.3 7878 | hexdump -C I find that the wifi credentials are not there. Occasionally it does restart at home station and I find my credentials are there and after each restart it goes to the station.

In commonservices.c I see your comment wifi_station_set_config(&stationConf); //I don't know why, doing this twice seems to make it store more reliably. Is this a manifestation of the unreliability?

I thought I had a way to get around the issue by having my wifi off when I tried to switch to my home station. It kept trying and failing, then I turned the wifi on and it seemed to connect and remember. However even with this it fails often.

Is there any testing I can do for you? Cheers, Bill

[con-f-use]

The problem with all your issues is, that I can't seem to reproduce them. At all. That means it's something not directly in the code. Writing the same thing twice and that helping, points to a flash issue.Letting your WiFi come up after the ESP might point to a DHCP thing (did you reserve the IP? is it used by another device?).

[bbkiwi]

Attached is a complete dump of flash after make erase initdefault burn burnweb. dump4b.zip Does this help? Is this the only information that persists when the ESP8266 is off?

I run Ubuntu as guest on a win 7 host. Sometimes make burn or make burnweb stops part way and I have to do it again. Also esptool.py read_flash doesn't seem to work.

However I can use esptool.py directly on the win 7 machine.

To test that make burn or make burnweb were not flashing properly, I flashed esp_init_data_default.bin, image.elf-0x00000.bin, image.elf-0x40000.bin) and page.mpfs uisng the win 7 esptool.py. The dumps produced both ways were the same.

There are other devices in the house that connect to the wifi (ipad, iphone). When the wifi comes up often the IP assigned gets changed (usually 192.168.1.2 3 4 or 5).

[bbkiwi]

Hi,

All this is very frustrating. I really like what you guys have done and would love to iron out this issue.

I have 2 nodemcu v1.0 and one nodemcu v0.9 (which may be faulty). I plug the nodemcu into usb.

With the Arduino IDE, I've tried the wifi sketches (completely erasing flash between each test). All work fine. I can connect to wifi station and the credentials are always remembered. I can scan and find stations.

But with the most recent commit on esp82xx/dev I can always connect to a station, but it rarely remembers. I never find any stations with scan.

I also tried with the nodemcu v0.9 and it behaves like you describe in #53.

[cnlohr]

Hmm... I was just using the most recent one two nights ago... I think I'll get back to this this weekend. @con-f-use will you be able to look into it sooner?

[con-f-use]

Seeing that I'm currently 1400m high in the Austrian Alps and will be this long weekend... probably not ;-D

[bbkiwi]

Hi @con-f-use Glad to see there is more to life than the ESP8266. Enjoy the mountains :-) Our NZ alps are getting very snowy now.

[cnlohr]

@bbkiwi Which subproject are you using? I just tried with esp8266lighthouse and had no issues. I couldn't get it to fail :-/ Are you using the ESP82xx project? If so, I can try that.

[bbkiwi]

Hi @cnlohr and @con-f-use

I can create and eliminate the problem at will! Charles I was getting ready to answer you last query (which is I have been using esp82xx project latest commit on dev 79ce4) when I thought I'll try it a few more times.

I got NO problems 6 times in a row (each time doing make clean initdefault burn burnweb). Every time it starts with the AP, I use my Raspberry Pi and connected via the backdoor sending cmd w1 ..., it connects to my home wifi, when I reset it reconnects!

This is what was DIFFERENT. I usually have a browser running on the Pi set to page 192.168.4.1 which starts the gui running when the Pi connects to the AP. IF the gui is running, when I switch to the home wifi network the credentials are NOT saved. IF it isn't works fine.

I get the messages below if I connect to the gui and the disconnect from the AP takes about 4 seconds. If the gui is not connected these messages don't appear and the disconnect is immediate. MFS Not found at regular address (ffffffff). MFS Found at: 00010000 404(favicon.ico)

Annotated Output.txt

I've been looking over commonservices.c more carefully and have a few questions which I will send as another issue (is this the right way to do this?)

Cheers, Bill

[cnlohr]

but but I have been setting my credentials with a browser... Lets treat that as a red haring, though.

For you you have captured a very, very interesting situation that I cannot reproduce. You could try changing the MPFS base address in your user.cfg to the 1M one. And seeing how it behaves. I expect you will not see any changes.

I am curious if other commands issued from the webpage could be confusing it. Commands like 'wx' 'e', 'i' or 'BL'. How weird would it be if calling 'wx' was what was causing issues for you! I think that's where my focus would be. Try to send those backend commands.

[cnlohr]

Dude. Thank you for all this work. Like thank you. A lot.

[bbkiwi]

I've done some of what you suggest. Changing MPFS base makes no difference. Command 'wx' via backend doesn't screw things up. Connecting to the gui with everything closed down (so only sending wx) and then close window, then change to station via backend and problem happens. I connected to url "192.168.1.3/xxx" which just gives file not found and I don't think this would start the socket, but then the problem happens. ... anyway late here time for bed.

[bbkiwi]

disabled mdns and problem still persists. Doesn't have to be fresh make, if I get AP with gpio 0, if I connect to station via the backend all is fine, if the gui had been up, then it fails to remember credentials.

[cnlohr]

OH NEW QUESTION: Do you scan for wifi to do it or put in the station? Also the way I do i is I select station mode, put in the SSID, password, then delete the mac address (leaving it blank) and say connect. I generally don't scan. Is that what you have been doing?

[bbkiwi]

Hi Scanning doesn't work for me at least when I'm connected to the station, not tried when connected to AP. I can connect to station (from AP with gui at 192.168.4.1) just like you do and it connects, but if RESET or unplug it goes back to AP again.

If I send the same info via the backdoor (with never have the gui open), it connects to station and also directly after resets and unplugging.

Off to choir practice. In a month I'm doing a solo on my LED banjo!

[bbkiwi]

I found some discussions about scan where there was a bug that caused the first ssid found to be missed. Since only my is strong the Arduino scan example usually finds only my wifi router AP (unless I hold the esp8266 very high and close to my window then sometimes it finds 1 or 2 others from distant neighbors).

Once the esp82xx scan option found one AP which was a weak signal from a neighbor and not my home wifi. So I thought maybe this skipping of the first ssid was happening. I started up a 2nd ESP9266 as AP and thought then I would have two strong APs and would see the second, but NO :-(

However --- On the Arduino IDE for nodemcu v1.0 I've just tried the examples from https://github.com/tzapu/WiFiManager which sets up an AP, scans and connects to a station and remembers its credentials. The scan finds my wifi with 100% signal, connects and remembers.

[bbkiwi]

Here are the bin files I make (commit 79ce4) and a log. Am I making the same files as you? Images.zip

[bbkiwi]

Using the newest esp82xx may be screwing up flash so it will no longer work with code based on earlier versions of esp82xx (those before toolchain with esp_nonos_sdk was added) :-O

I thought I'd go back to tweaking embedded8266 on the dev branch of my fork of colorchord. It uses commit 0946 of esp82xx and sdk esp_iot_sdk_v1.5.2.

I couldn't get it to run. I couldn't get esp82XX-basic to run either - constant reboots and other strange errors. I tried preping the nodemcu using make erase from esp82xx no luck! Tried make erase initdefault no luck! I thought the nodemcu was a gonner #$@#$

I was able to fixed it by first running an Arduino sketch that connects to my wifi. After that I can burn and run the colorchord/embedded8266 code and it works again ;-?

Is initdefault only for your version of esp_nonos_sdk? Maybe after running the Arduino sketch I could read 128 bytes of flash at 0x3FC000 and make an esp_init_data_another_default.bin to initialize for earlier versions of esp82xx. A total hack based on no understanding whatsoever!

[cnlohr]

I would do that. I am really confused what project you are making. If we can pick a specific, basic project, that would be easiest. Something like esp8266ws2812i2s. Perhaps @con-f-use 's git clone --recursive https://github.com/con-f-use/esp82XX-basic

^^ Currently trying esp82XX-basic with newest esp82xx [dev]

OH MY! I CAN RECREATE YOUR PROBLEM!!!

OK! I can work on this tomorrow. YESSSS.

And by yessss I mean noooooooo because it means it's actually a real problem.

[cnlohr]

OK!!! So, if you use regular esp82xx, and then you use the web gui, but you LEAVE the MAC address in the box, then click connect, does it work? I thought that would make it match the bssid, but it seems not to. It seems to work every time for me. This points to a deeper problem.

[cnlohr]

Or not, this is random.

[bbkiwi]

Hi Charles, I am using the example as in the "Start a new Project" section of README.md

mkdir my_new_esp_project cd my_new_esp_project -- here I put a link to my fork of esp82xx
cp esp82xx/Makefile.example Makefile make project

Test 1 - make erase initdefault burn burnweb connect to AP Go to gui in browser change to station, ssid, pw, blank mac (it should change) Reset ESP8266 it will revert to AP

Test 2 - make erase initdefault burn burnweb connect to AP DO NOT go to the gui, but use netcat to send w1\tssid\tpass\t\t (it should change to station) RESET and it will reconnect to the station

[cnlohr]

For me, it's doing it either way, seemingly randomly.

[cnlohr]

Sometimes switching, sometimes not.

[bbkiwi]

the code that uses mac address is a bit iffy - the bssid is really the 4th param and there is a defunct third param (commonservices.c line 396)

Look in my repo https://github.com/bbkiwi/esp82xx/tree/experiment and look at the changes to commonservices.c

These changes are not neccessarily fixes but I made this branch to fiddle around with the code.

[cnlohr]

I am thurroughly confused by thees hex files. It looks like there is some sort of confusion as to the proper location of the wifi settings. Sector 7d or sector 3fd.

[cnlohr]

I tried switching everything over to the newest SDK. Still no dice.

[cnlohr]

P.S. Newest SDK takes an extra 1264 bytes!?!? WHYY? So, it seems that if I set it multiple times, it eventually does take. I have never needed to set more than 3 times by GUI. Do you ever run into cases where you have to set it more than that?

[cnlohr]

So, it seems that if I set it multiple times, it eventually does take. I have never needed to set more than 3 times by GUI. Do you ever run into cases where you have to set it more than that?

[bbkiwi]

I dumped memory in the case it does not reconnect to the station and find wifi credentials at 7d only but in the case that is does reconnect to the station the credentials are at both 7d and 3fd. Maybe ? current wifi stored at 7d and saved wifi and 3fd.

Is the newest SDK 2.0.1? (in order for me to use it with colorchord/embedded8266 I'm forced to use 1.5.2 or 1.5.4 otherwise not enough memory)

At this point for me the GUI hardly ever works (but maybe sometimes after repeated attempts). I will test the 3 times strategy tomorrow. But I have never had the gui work immediately after using make erase initdefault

Once I have an the ESP8266 that works with the newest esp82xx, I cannot get it to work with the earlier commits fo esp82xx using 1.5.2 unless I do my trip of loading a Arduino wifi station sketch.

[cnlohr]

Several days ago, you said "But with the most recent commit on esp82xx/dev I can always connect to a station, but it rarely remembers. I never find any stations with scan." Can you identify a specific commit where things /did/ work first time every time? I think I'm going to try that next, but I can certainly recreate this problem now. I will also second your "never saves first time" with the current environment.

Re: SDKs: esp82xx by default uses a weird amalgam of the 2.0.1 SDK and some custom binaries. I was just trying a stab at 2.1.0.