Poor network connectivity wifi or ethernet

I tried every single image from oowow right now and it is every time that wifi performance seems unstable at best and downright unworkable most of the times.

I tried the ubuntu images first but they are basically unusable. You can’t really own the machine once this images run ubuntu, because every time you change something (like keyboard layout or vlc configuration) it forgets about those at next reboot. Let alone that you could run any media files decently on these images: it stutters, skips and crashes all the time. Sometimes the wifi or network in general would not work after reboot and the board had to reboot a second time to get passed that hurdle.

Android was a bit better, but only the last image was a bit usuable. The first image was plainly unable to maintain wifi connections at all, the second (from december) was simply not booting at all an the third lost wifi (and even ethernet sometimes) every time after reboot.

Once a wifi connection was lost (even without a reboot - I restart my wifi router sometimes for maintenance), there is no way to re-establish it again, without re-installing the machine entirely.

Every other computer/tablet/GSM in the room I tried did this perfectly al right. wifi 2.4 or 5 ghz are quite stable. 5 GHZ is strong enough to stream bluray video’s accross the house on almost every device (linux, windows, android, iOS, you name it, we use it).

Even when I booted my device really at 10 cm away from my wifi router it displayed similar bad behaviour. As it did with the ethernet cable via USB-C: unusually sluggish, unstable, etc. The signal was, as always, strong as an ox, yet the khadas edge2 didn’t detect a single packet.

The OS offered by Oowow until now are strictly unusable for almost anything IMHO: not for media (netflix app won’t work, even not via APK), not for gaming, not for testing.

It might also be a hardware problem, but I wouldn’t know how to detect the difference.

Have you attach the antenna propuerly?

Which image you used?

We are keep improve the image, so please use the latest image.

Same issue with the Edge2 I just received: it cannot see or connect with my 5G router in Ubuntu (IMAGE_VERSION=1.4-221229), only the 2G works though the Edge2 is less than 1 meter away from my router. All my other devices (Macs, phones, tablets) have not issue connecting to 5G despite being much farther away. If I run the “nmcli d wifi list” command, most of the time only my 2G is listed (and the 5G is never shown). Note that when booting into OOWOW, all networks around my office show up and it can connect to either my 2G or 5G network without problem. Looks like the issue is specific to Ubuntu.

Have you attach the antenna propuerly?

I have the pro version with a housing + fan around it.
I didn’t open it to attach any antenna. The wifi sometimes worked. Sometimes didn’t. The wifi worked always while I used Oowow to download images, but mindbogglingly slow. Once an image was installed the machine worked for a while (and fine when it did) but never for more than a day or couple of days. It then lost wifi (no updates or anything) and never could find it back.

Which image you used?

[edge2-ubuntu-22.04-gnome-linux-5.10-fenix-1.2-221018.img.xz and
[edge2-ubuntu-22.04-gnome-linux-5.10-fenix-1.4-221229.img.xz
Completely unstable, both of them.

We are keep improve the image, so please use the latest image.

Well I did use this one: edge2-android-12-v220920.img.xz - as it was the only android image that would eventually run for a day or a couple of days.

And even that one doesn’t work any longer for me right now. Can’t get it finding any wifi again. Re-installed this image a couple of days ago at least three times to get it running again. Nothing. I am currently using an 6 years old windows 11 laptop as a replacement media box. It is an underpowered AMD chip laptop with 8 GB ram. This thing from the stone age is never having any wifi problems and can playback BluRay 4K video across 2.4G wifi. My android tablet is 5 years old and never has any trouble with the wifi here at my house.

So why is a state of the art SOC with 16 GB of fast RAM and more calculation power than any of these machines not just get the wifi allright? This is not workable for me. Period. I would prefer to send it back to you and have my money back. Thank you.

Have you tried testing the device with the wifi power savings turned off to see if that makes a difference? To try this in linux you can do the following as long as you have iwconfig installed:
sudo iwconfig wlan0 power off
This will be noticeable right away if it made a difference. It is not persistent so if it does help you will need to either create a udev rule or some other startup script either in your NetworkManager settings to turn it off.

It may be worth opening the case to double check the antenna hasnt popped off or on the way to popping off.

Does your Edge2 is Maker Kit or ARM PC version? Have you attach the antenna propuerly?
Have you attcahe the usb device (mouse & keyboard) to USB 3.0 port? Can you try to attache the usb device to USB 2.0 port?

https://docs.khadas.com/products/sbc/edge2/hardware/start

Could you provide the information below to me?

nmcli d wifi list > wifi.txt
dmesg > kernel.txt

Please provde wifi.txt and kernel.txt to me.

Have you attcahe the usb device (mouse & keyboard) to USB 3.0 port? Can you try to attache the usb device to USB 2.0 port?

https://docs.khadas.com/products/sbc/edge2/hardware/start

Have you attcahe the usb device (mouse & keyboard) to USB 3.0 port? Can you try to attache the usb device to USB 2.0 port?

I did changed the USB device to both ports as the power supply didn’t seem to work well attached to one or the other. Ethernet remained slow throughout.

Please provde wifi.txt and kernel.txt to me.

I suppose that you mean in Ubuntu? I will not return to ubuntu because mediaplayback is stuttering all the time. I wouldn’t know how to fire up a workable terminal in Android and I am not even sure the same commands would apply.

It may be worth opening the case to double check the antenna hasnt popped off or on the way to popping off.

If that would be the case it I wouldn’t know how to do that properly, anyway.
And why would that be the case indeed, as without touching the device, wifi went and wifi came back? The one day it works. The next day it doesn’t. I re-installed the whole machine and again the same recipe of problems: starting wifi is OK. After reboot, it loses the wifi again. So again re-installed the whole thing and wifi was back again. So I decided to leave it on like you might do with an ordinary tablet. After three or four days (without touching the device) wifi was gone again. This time re-booting or even re-installing android (latest image) wasn’t good enough to bring wifi back. Whenever you try to bring wifi back, android all by itself switches it off again. So I tried several things to bring wifi back again. Always the same set of problems emerged: the slider for wifi in the android settings was off after every time I rebooted the device. Switching it on didn’t bring wifi back. In fact, the machine didn’t even receive any wifi signal at all after sliding it on. From any wifi box in the neighbourhood and there are quite a few I can normally see close to my media display. A couple of times the machine did connect almost immediately to the wifi I gave it the password for. After losing wifi again after x iterations: silence reigned supreme. And that is where I am right now: no working wifi possible. Not near or far from the antenna.

Hello @Corfromleuven

Sorry for the issues, we will try to reproduce this issue on our side with Android image.

As we can’t reproduce on our side, so could you please provide the details you reproduce this issue?

I tried to reproduce this based on the most recent android image:

  1. The wifi connection only works with 2.4G, not with 5G, even not when I deleted the 2.4 password. Wifi 2.4 shows up as the most powerfull connection in the list of wifi options. Wifi 5 sometimes pops up, but disappears again. The same is happening with plenty of other wifi stations of neighbours by the way. The problem seems that wifi five can in fact connect, but has trouble keeping that connection; as most devices here at home are using 2.4 it is not about availability of IP addresses or lack of signal. It takes about 2 minutes before the wifi 5 connection is established 30 cm away from my wifi box. Downstairs (about 3 meters way, accross a wooden floor, this is even not happening and not with 2.4 G either.
    As I said: no other device is displaying any problem with wifi here at home and we use a mix of windows, iOS, Linux and Android devices all the timeµ
  2. Downloading the Oowow image over wifi takes ages. This can of course depend on your servers. Similar downloads over wifi on my linux pc (upgrade packages and all that) barely take a less than half the time
  3. After Install the wifi slider in the android settings is off. When i turn it on the only wifi showing up is wifi 2.4G (30 cm away from the box). It takes minutes before 5 G is actually showing up and several tries from the machine to obtain an IP address; I testen this also on other machines and they typically get the address almost immediately. I also configured the 2.4G as a second option and whenever I do that 5G disappears again. When I manually disconnect 2.4G again it again takes 5 G ages to connect at all with the router. So 5G is definitely not stable on this machine.
  4. Also the machine gets quite hot and doesn’t fire up the fan to cool it down; it does work, because every time I re-install the machine, the fan tests and blows quite loud at the beginning.
  5. After a reboot 30 cm away from my wifi router it takes about 30 seconds to reconnect with. Strangely enough, when it does, it takes 5G as the best option (which it is in terms of signal strenght anyway)
  6. I will now test it downstairs again to see how it goes

Hello @Corfromleuven

Have you checked other router? And please provide the model information of current router.