question

Dave van Dongen avatar image
Dave van Dongen asked

Why is the Wifi connection CCGX dropping out regularly?

I have a Victron ESS system with a CCGX in the garden shed (with solar panel roof) in the garden behind my house. The distance from my Wifi router is around 8 meter.
I have a Nano Wifi USB adapter in the CCGX that connects to the router. The signal strength is indicated on the CCGX at always around 45%.
Now for days or sometimes even max. 1,5-2 weeks the connection is stable, but eventually it always drops out at some point. I then reconnect and then it fine for a few days again.
Why is the connection dropping out every time?
And why is it not reconnecting? I now have to connect manually every time.

Sometimes the reconnection also a few times before succesful. Why is this?

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max-b avatar image max-b commented ·

We are several of us experiencing Wifi connection loss. The point is that Victron staff does not acknowledge it, probably since they can't reproduce the bug.

To be honest, I must add that stability is better recently. I didn't check if some update to the CCGX is involved or what…

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Guy Stewart (Victron Community Manager) avatar image Guy Stewart (Victron Community Manager) ♦♦ max-b commented ·

Wifi is an inherently unstable connection. The “solution” to a permanent and reliable internet connection is to hard wire Ethernet.

There has been a new feature added recently that will restart the GX device if the internet connection drops for a certain amount of time. This has improved the ‘reconnection’ situation a lot.

I had issues with wifi drop outs in my shed. I was using a cheap wifi router. I recently got sick of it, and upgraded the home internet wifi system to a Ubiquiti unifi system. It was a lot more complex to setup than I expected, and a lot more costly. But so far it has stayed up.

I changed nothing on the CCGX and VenusGX side, just the routers and wifi access points.

If it drops again, I will just give up and wire in Ethernet.


If there is a case where an end user was able to reliably re-create a dropout bug, then we would definitely be interested in looking at the logs and getting our hands on the unit to see what is going wrong and how to fix it.

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Dave van Dongen avatar image Dave van Dongen Guy Stewart (Victron Community Manager) ♦♦ commented ·

See for yourself if you think this is normal. I don't think so... :-/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XhIgUQnPmyc&feature=youtu.be

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Guy Stewart (Victron Community Manager) avatar image Guy Stewart (Victron Community Manager) ♦♦ Dave van Dongen commented ·

Looks quite normal for a marginal connection.

It looks like the GX device is trying to connect but unable to get past the stage of acquiring an IP address from the DHCP server.

Try some of the suggestions in the answers, like using a USB extension cable and getting the wifi dongle in a better location, and see if that helps to improve things.

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Dave van Dongen avatar image Dave van Dongen Guy Stewart (Victron Community Manager) ♦♦ commented ·

If I am at the same location with my smartphone or laptop, I have good reception. Never a problem. If I purposely disconnect the wifi and reconnect, these devices connect straight away to the wifi again. Every single time, not a problem in the world. My garden shed is halfway my garden. If I go all the way to the back of my garden (twice the distance) reconnecting to wifi with my laptop and smartphone is not a problem and completely straightforward and fast, every time again. So I don't think the connection is a problem.

I think you are right by saying that this is a problem with getting the IP address or some other set in the connection process. But to me it looks like the software takes a wrong step somewhere.

I still have to try the extension cabel. I will soon.

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Paul B avatar image Paul B Dave van Dongen commented ·

Dave what version of the firmware are you using if not the latest then upgrade.

I did see a bug report that showed that if you sat on that screen in the CCGX then it would always fail to connect, that issue was found and fixed in the latter Fw versions for the CCGX I think the issue was in 2.30 version anyway it was fixed in 2.32.

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Dave van Dongen avatar image Dave van Dongen Paul B commented ·

Thanks for your suggestions. I upgraded to v2.32~2 on the 29th of June,at 18:59h. The YouTube movie with many connection attempts was made on the 30th of June, at 19:14h.

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gls avatar image gls Guy Stewart (Victron Community Manager) ♦♦ commented ·

Hi Guy,

To your comment:

"There has been a new feature added recently that will restart the GX device if the internet connection drops for a certain amount of time. This has improved the ‘reconnection’ situation a lot"

How do we switch this on for a Cerbo? I have a LAN connection to a 4G router.


Thanks


Guy

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doubleyouess avatar image doubleyouess commented ·

Has there been any further development on this issue? I have just commissioned my system and have the same issue. WiFi strength shows as 53% on CCGX (firmware ver 2.57), ubiquity Access Point with very strong signal on any other device at the same location, but CCGX disconnects all the time and will not automatically reconnect. CCGX is about 5 meters from AP. It also keeps on giving error message saying Access Point not found, even though my wifi is extremely stable and runs for months on end with all other devices, wifi cameras etc. staying connected.

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shellness avatar image shellness commented ·

Is there a resolution to this problem, please?


I have a Victron Nano USB WiFi dongle in my Venus GX - it loses the WiFi connection after about 20 seconds and gives a comment about not ejecting the disc properly (and then fails to display the WiFi device) – I take it this is a reboot.


Also, why doesn’t the Venus GX retain the password of a WiFi device?

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6 Answers
nigelfxs avatar image
nigelfxs answered ·

One thing you can try is to connect the Nano Wifi USB adaptor to a USB extension cable.

This will give you more flexibility in the positioning of the WiFi antenna so may improve the WiFi signal strength (and hence connection reliability). You will need to experiment to find the optimum placement of the USB Adaptor.

Some WiFi bands are more congested than others, so you may want to also experiment with changing the WiFi band settings on your router.

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Guy Stewart (Victron Community Manager) avatar image Guy Stewart (Victron Community Manager) ♦♦ commented ·

Good Suggestions NigelFXS.

There is also the option to use the long range wifi adapter with external antenna to increase wifi reliability.

Though nothing is a certain fix (except the hardwire).

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Dave van Dongen avatar image Dave van Dongen commented ·

I will try both suggestions. But if you see the video that I have attached, it seems to be more of a software issue, than a reception issue.

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max-b avatar image max-b Dave van Dongen commented ·

I'm also on a software issue.

While I must say that many components can play in. My wifi is based on Velop devices. Quite powerful but had somme issues also. They updated them and it works much better now. So maybe that's why the nano on the GX is more stable.

Nevertheless, in a given setup, wifi is less stable on the GX than on other devices around. Probably because it does not recover well from a lost connection.

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mvader (Victron Energy) avatar image
mvader (Victron Energy) answered ·

Hello all,

  • We fixed a WiFi reconnect issue in v2.31, a month ago. See the change log.
  • Also in that release we added a auto-reboot feature: https://www.victronenergy.com/blog/2019/06/06/venus-os-v2-31-various-fixes/
  • 45% is really a very low signal for WiFi. What could be happening to @Dave van Dongen in the situation that a few manual reconnect attempts are required, is that the router temporarily blocks the GX device, because it thinks the wrong password was used (that can happen because of low signal). But thats pure speculation from my side.

If anyone is experiencing reproducible issues where it still won’t reconnect by itself (fw version > v2.31) then please let me know.

And lastly, indeed, getting a 100% stable wifi is or has been proven to be difficult.

Thank you, Matthijs


Ps at @Dave van Dongen now with v2.31, do you still have to manually reconnect after it lost the connection after 4 - 14 days of operation? (To test that, make sure to disable to auto-reboot feature).

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Dave van Dongen avatar image Dave van Dongen commented ·

I upgraded to v2.32~2 on the 29th of June,at 18:59h. The YouTube movie with many connection attempts was made on the 30th of June, at 19:14h. At this moment (the 2nd of July, at 08:32h) the CCGX is offline, already since the 30th of June,at 20:01h. (So it dropped the connection 1 hour after the YouTube movie with connection attempts was made and the connection never returned. I didn't physically check if the unit is rebooting or not. I can check tonight.)

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Dave van Dongen avatar image Dave van Dongen Dave van Dongen commented ·

Well, obviously the unit didn't reboot, but I didn't enable the "Reboot on lost VRM", because I didn't know it was a setting that I had to set. I thought it was automatic, in the background. I have set the setting now. I left it on default (which is 1h0m, right?) and then the CCGX rebooted after about 15 seconds, while it was connected at that moment. Is that supposed to happen? Or was this a crash?

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max-b avatar image
max-b answered ·

As a workaround, you can get the wifi connection back up by displaying the wifi setting page and make a false change. Like erasing a 0 in a wifi address or anything you do and undo. Then when leaving the settings screen the cccx reconnects.

It may also reconnect by itself hours or days latter. I can't figure why sometimes it reconnects 2 hours latter sometimes 12.

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max-b avatar image
max-b answered ·

I'm on 2.32 and I must say that I did not experience wifi loss for a few days by now.

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kevgermany avatar image
kevgermany answered ·

Any updates? I've just set up a system in my camper van. All running perfectly yesterday, had connections to my home wlan and a mobile access point. Now it's locked into the home system with a failed connection, can't even get it to see any of the other Wlan or the mobile WiFi access point.


As with others above, my phone behaves flawlessly. Switching from home to mobile as appropriate.


CCGX running latest software, upgraded it when I set it up

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av1um avatar image
av1um answered ·

Although this is an quite 'old' problem described here, I desperately would encourage Victron to change the reconnecting behaviour of the WiFi adapter.
We are on FW 2.72 in the meantime, but this kind of WiFi-Stuck-manner still exists and has not been improved further since 2.32.

As you (Victron) can see in the video of Dave (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XhIgUQnPmyc), it will stop reconnecting after 2-3 tries and then remain in a disconnected or failure status.

Please fix this and let the WiFi device KEEP connecting until there is a connection - without pressing a button or reboot the device. For example implement a countdown timer (30-60s) which will force the WiFi adapter to give it a constant retry until success.


Just think of a scenario where there is NO (or at least almost no) possibility to be on site. If you need to rely on this connection and cannot access the system anymore, this really is no bearable situation.
And yes, of course there is a possibility to hard-wire - but sometimes you just cannot take this into a closer look because of local conditions and wifi WILL remain the only option.

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mvader (Victron Energy) avatar image mvader (Victron Energy) ♦♦ commented ·
Hi @Av1um ,


Various issues causing the wifi to be unable to reconnect have been solved since v2.32. But (indeed) not all

Also here in r&d we’d much prefer to have this fixed, but it has proven to be not easy at all.

In some cases its even the router that blocks the wifi device. And in others, fixing one thing breaks the other. The solution might be to replace the network manager we’re using (its not our own code, its a linux-related opensource network manager), but that is a big task, with also risks of missing edge cases and some time to get it 100% again.


all that being said, I have some good news also: we have a possible fix. Tested already in on a few systems where it works well. I’ll contact you by email.


Ps. @ anyone reading this: make aure to be aware of the auto reboot feature. It handles all possible issues; and for any remote system I strongly recommend enabling it. note that also it tests the end-to-end connection, rather than just the wifi link.

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nickdb avatar image nickdb ♦♦ commented ·

The antennae in those mini wifi usb sticks are terrible, you also need to consider not just the distance between the AP and client but the medium that is in-between.

Even with one "bar" less signal you can have an unstable connection, that is wifi, this is before you consider interference from channel overlap.

First place to start is with a good (full) signal. Use ssid scanners to look for overlap in the band and if needed, manually change this. It is also best to use narrow channels if signal is an issue.

The majority of complaints Victron cannot fix as it is outside their control.


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av1um avatar image av1um commented ·

Of course they cannot fix 'obstacle' problems, but all I suggest is a constant retry in the connection-routine. Every phone manages to do this, why cant the CCGX?

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mvader (Victron Energy) avatar image mvader (Victron Energy) ♦♦ av1um commented ·
We tried making it do that, many times already. And unfortunately "making it retry always" is -apparently- just not as simple as it sounds.


But rather than continuing to talk about it, lets test the latest possible solution.

Few more questions @Av1um :

1) how often does your wifi get stuck? Ie after a couple of days, or ... ?

2) Is it a mobile application where you move the equipment out of range? For example like a campervan configured to login to the home network, which works when on the driveway and then drives out of range when going away? Or is the distance between access point and ccgx constant?

3) If it gets stuck, what do you see in the WiFi menu? (pls post a picture). You said disconnected or failed status: do you see it be stuck in both of these? Or?

4) When in that state, how do you make it work again? For example by reboot, or doing something in the menu, or ... ?

5) Did you try the auto-reboot function, and does that work for you?


Thank you, Matthijs




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av1um avatar image av1um mvader (Victron Energy) ♦♦ commented ·

Umm... I briefly answered down here... now my answers are gone?

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mvader (Victron Energy) avatar image mvader (Victron Energy) ♦♦ av1um commented ·
Yes I


but the lengthy one disappeared. Let me try make it come back.

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av1um avatar image av1um mvader (Victron Energy) ♦♦ commented ·
thx for bringing this back!
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mvader (Victron Energy) avatar image mvader (Victron Energy) ♦♦ av1um commented ·
Welcome, thank you for the in depth reply. I’ll answer later.


one thing: this is an offgrid site right? Then the controlling of the Fronius is done using AC frequency shift. No comms involved. Comms is only for monitoring.

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av1um avatar image av1um mvader (Victron Energy) ♦♦ commented ·

now that you mention this - yes, of course, I actually know... but, why does the Symo manual and the GX Modbus TCP manual then tell me how to set up controlling via modbus?
I'm honestly getting a little confused now?!

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mvader (Victron Energy) avatar image mvader (Victron Energy) ♦♦ av1um commented ·
Its for a grid tied installation, zero feed-in. I’ll get the manual checked if it needs clarification.


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Guy Stewart (Victron Community Manager) avatar image Guy Stewart (Victron Community Manager) ♦♦ av1um commented ·
Hi @Av1um

Can you please post a link to the section of the manual that you found confusing? I might be able to improve it for clarity.


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av1um avatar image av1um Guy Stewart (Victron Community Manager) ♦♦ commented ·

https://www.victronenergy.com/live/ccgx:modbustcp_faq

"Modbus-TCP is an industry standard protocol, that can be used to interface PLCs or other third party equipment with Victron products. Through the Modbus-TCP interface you can read and write data to the chargers, battery monitors, inverter/chargers and other products connected to the GX device."

Well, maybe I simply didnt get this right, but this guideline does not explicitly say "don't use Modbus when running an off-grid setup" ?

-> what will happen, if I have it enabled (which still is the case) for the last ~2 years? I couldnt figure out any issues though...?

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Guy Stewart (Victron Community Manager) avatar image Guy Stewart (Victron Community Manager) ♦♦ av1um commented ·

Ok, that is still true, but very generalised information. There is no issue running Modbus TCP while off grid, and it is fine and normal to do so, but it is not the primary mechanism for power control of an AC PV inverter when off grid. It is still used for the production data communication.


Here is the much more specific and relevant documentation that better describes how your Fronius AC PV inverter is controlled by the Victron system:

https://www.victronenergy.com/live/ac_coupling:start

https://www.victronenergy.com/live/ac_coupling:fronius


I also created a training video where it is explained here:

https://vimeo.com/402155714

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av1um avatar image av1um commented ·

Hey Matthijs,

to answer all of your questions, here goes:

1) this is totally irregular. sometimes this happens twice a day, then it keeps working for weeks again
I cannot find a pattern in here which would explain when and why is disconnects.

2) it's not mobile. it's all fixed. distance is about ~8m (I'd guess) to the router, only wood and plastering boards in between, some chairs, few plants. it's mounted in an attic of a house, where the livingroom is in between CCGX & router. signal strength is ~50%, but constant.

3) at the moment I cannot post a picture as it currently is connected. if I remember this right, status is being reported as "failed". further problem of posting will be: the whole system is being surveilled from abroad, currently nobody is staying there. and so, IF it disconnects again, I cannot make a screenshot. this is why this kind of remote management is so important to me.

and talking further: the PV-generator is a Fronius which is hard-wired to the ethernet port of the CCGX. this makes is most reliable, as the whole system is off-grid, and the Fronius needs to be throttled by all means. I dont want to put another switch or any other device in between, which might break the connection. broken connection to the Fronius would mean overcharging batteries - which of course is entirely out of question

4) when the router is performing a renewal of it's WAN-IP, it will apparently let the CCGX reconnect. when this procedure is failing, I will need to wait until next renewal. until today, this is the only chance I got - or driving about 450km to that place.

5) I did not consider auto-reboot on purpose:
as I said, the PV-gen is a Fronius (Symo). as stated here https://community.victronenergy.com/questions/98144/ccgx-fronius-symo-connected-unknown.html
I meanwhile (sometimes) got this weird behaviour. when this is happening, the Fronius is NOT being throttled, and will be generating as much power as it can produce (I always wanted to get in touch with Fronius about this and suggest a failsafe-condition).
let's assume, the Fronius is connected and working fine - and this 'state' NEEDS to be achieved first, agree? - and I enable the CCGX to perform a reboot on a dropped WiFi connection - after this, ending up in the opposite scenario to have an unthrottled Symo... it will overcharge the batteries (we're talking offgrid, and the power needs to go somewhere) and things will even be much worse then...

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av1um avatar image av1um av1um commented ·

last 'near-to-100%-safe' solution to me would be (although I hate doing it that way):
hard-wiring everthing with an industrial redundant switch and entirely getting rid of the WiFi.

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