K6BPM
I am starting a new thread here because I was getting nowhere with the other 2 I have going. After a lot of testing with very little helpful information, I think most of my issues are because of the way WiFi is handled by the OS2. Let me relate the following scenario using solely DMR. In my OS2 I have all 5 WiFi connections defined.
I start my day with the OS2 connected to my home WiFi.
I leave for work. The OS2 still won't connect to my Netgear Nighthawk, but we'll ignore that for now. My iPhone Personal Hotspot is on all the time, so I expect the OS2 to connect to the phone when I get out of range of my home WiFi. Eventually it does, but it takes a minimum of 8 minutes to do this.
I get to work and place the OS2 out of range of my iPhone. I expect it to connect to my work WiFi. Eventually it does, but again takes several minutes.
Here's is the problem. Almost every time it changes WiFi connections, it becomes unstable. By unstable, I mean this: When I try to make a call, it will flash between green and red really quickly. By quickly, I mean it is flashing alternately between green and red and sometimes yellow. Weird. It does this for a couple of seconds, and after that it will no longer transmit. Only a cold restart will rescue it.
I would like to know how to get the OS2 to switch WiFi networks quickly and not require a restart when it does. Pi-Star based hotspots are very fast and stable. The OS2 falls way behind the cheap Chinese hotspots in this area.
HA2NON
Was the OS2 powered all the time from a power bank?
Which connector and modem mode do you have activated?
Did you change any of the settings or switch configuration profiles, connectors, modem modes during the test?
Which OS2 firmware version do you use?
K6BPM
"Was the OS2 powered all the time from a power bank?"
Yes
"Which connector and modem mode do you have activated?"
I am not trying to do anything fancy at this point, only diagnose stability problems. I am using my #1 connector. It is plain DMR - Homebrew/MMDVM
"Did you change any of the settings or switch configuration profiles, connectors, modem modes during the test?"
No, nothing changed since I sent you mt original settings a few days ago.
"Which OS2 firmware version do you use?"
I am using v30
K6BPM
Digging deeper, I am looking at the "Internet conn. check". I believe this is contributing to the problem.
To perform your check you are making a request on port 80 to netcheck.sharkrf.com. netcheck.sharkrf.com is a CNAME that resolves to a Google storage server. This is resolving (for me anyway) to a server in Amsterdam. I am in California. You are either looking for a 200 response, or looking for a result string of "netcheck.sharkrf.com".
Respectfully, this is a rather crude and very inefficient way to perform an "internet available" check. A much more efficient and reliable way is to resolve something like "google.com". This will use the users provider DNS to return an IP address. A common domain like google.com is always cached and can theoretically respond in
Now a question please: Can I turn this off? Possibly by giving it a value of 0?
I do not want to check for Internet availability using a potentially unreliable mechanism. I would rather that it simply verify that a local WiFi connection is available and leave it alone if it is connected. Using cellular, I frequently pass through dead spots, and the Internet connection check has a high probability of producing a false positive.
HA2NON
You can turn internet connection check off by setting the interval to 0. The device does not measure the time required for DNS resolving. The CNAME points to an anycast IP address so it does not mean anything that you are seeing an Amsterdam address. The request will be automatically served from a Google cloud server located physically close to your location. By the way, Android phones use the same method for internet connectivity check.
https://android.stackexchange.com/questions/123129/how-does-wifi-in-android-detect-if-the-device-has-to-sign-in-or-not
Please send us the exported device log (not the call log) which is showing your calls or something when the issue is happening. You can export the device log on the Status page.
K6BPM
Yes, I understand that. My first two passes of my test actually did route to Amsterdam, and the average response time was 1.8 seconds. A couple of were routed to Utah, and one to Mountain View. They had better responses times. Google.com uses a TTL of 60 seconds, so you are virtually always ensured that no local devices are caching the response. Personally, I don't try to emulate Android. Just FWIW.
But thank you for the answer. I have set it to 0 and turned it off. That's what I was looking for.
KD6QFO
I am curious, what was the fix. I wen to the link that was cited as the solution by Norb and I did not see a conclusion.
I have two OS2's, side by side (well, 2ft apart) and they drop connection multiple times an hour. Flashing red/blue. I also have to hard reboot when changing wifi or changing the WAN connection in a failover router.
Like many of said, the Wi-Fi implementation or hardware leaves a lot to be desired.
Thank you.