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10/18/2023 Map Stopped Working?
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Livesectional Image can't connect to wifi

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(@gwlanger)
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Joined: 2 years ago
Posts: 11
Topic starter  

Hi,

 

I have a raspberry Pi 4B that I am trying to set up with the livesectional image.  I was unable to get berrylan to work, so I tried the suggestion of a different post to use the Raspberry Pi OS to first update the firmware and OS, reboot, and then put the livesectional image back on.  Berrylan still didn't recognize the Pi, so connected to a monitor and keyboard and tried to do the raspi-config to setup the wifi that way.  I have tried two different wifi networks, including the one that worked with the Raspberry Pi OS that I used SSH to update the firmware for, and the livesectional image still says "Internet NOT Available".  I tried redownloading and reimaging the card again with the livesectional image, rebooting, and still had no luck.  Here's an image of what I get after using sudo raspi-config to setup the SSID and password (that worked with the official Raspberry Pi image).  Any suggestions for why the livesectional image may not be able to connect but the official one could?

 

Thanks!

 

Greg

 

image

   
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Mark Harris
(@markyharris)
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Joined: 5 years ago
Posts: 559
 

Greg, sorry for the hassles. When you get to the command prompt, try pinging yahoo.com and see if its reachable. I'm at work at the moment, but if you can give me more pics I'll try to duplicate the issue and help out. - Mark


   
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(@gwlanger)
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Joined: 2 years ago
Posts: 11
Topic starter  

@markyharris Thanks Mark.  

 

I get ping: yahoo.com: Temorary failure in name resolution when I ping from the Pi.  Also I can see on my google wifi app that the pi is not a connected device.  However, I do see listed as a previously connected device from when I had the Official Raspberry Pi os installed to update the firmware.  

 

Let me know what pics might be helpful for you and I'll provide.  Thanks again.


   
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Mark Harris
(@markyharris)
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Joined: 5 years ago
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Try this fix;

https://www.livesectional.com/community/postid/1012/

It may not be the problem, but I know a similar issue occurred early on and this library needed to be updated. Please let me know what happens. This hasn't been a common concern expressed by others. 

Another idea would be to connect a cat5 cable and see if it see's the internet that way. Just a thought. - Mark


   
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(@gwlanger)
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Topic starter  

@markyharris Hmm, I'm not sure that will be possible without an internet connection right?  I suppose I can try to track down a cat cable and plug it in and update it that way.  


   
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Mark Harris
(@markyharris)
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Joined: 5 years ago
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Yep, you are right. An internet connection will be needed. Wasn't thinking. Try the cable before worrying about updating that library. I'm not sure why wifi worked on the other image and not this one. This image uses a normal Pi image with libraries added. 

While a pain, you could build your own image by cloning the github repository; https://github.com/markyharris/livesectional.

But then you will have to add the dependencies used. If you feel comfortable with this it would be interesting to see if that works for you when the prepared image didn't.

By chance do you have another RPi to try? Maybe a 3B? Might be worth giving that a try. If I think of anything else, I'll let you know. - Mark


   
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(@gwlanger)
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Joined: 2 years ago
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Topic starter  

@markyharris I did plug it in with a cable and the script seemed to work perfectly without error.  Gave me an IP and was continuosly grabbing weather.  I tried updating that library but it said that it was already up to date.  Unfortunately, when I unplugged the cable and rebooted, I was still unable to connect to the wifi.  To summarize:

 

The raspberry PI was able to connect to the wifi with the "official" image

The livesectional image works just fine with the wired connection

The livesectional image isn't able to connect to the wifi using the same info as the official image.

I'm not sure how to build an image as I've never tried anything like that before, but it might be my next step.  I think I may also try re-flashing the card with the prepared image another time to see if a fresh download and flash somehow fixes it.  

 

Thanks again for your help and ideas and for putting this together. 


   
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Mark Harris
(@markyharris)
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Joined: 5 years ago
Posts: 559
 

I don't recall hearing that others had a similar issue where they couldn't connect to Wifi but worked with a cable. I'd have to search the forums to be sure though. 

I do know that when the RPi 4 first came out there was an issue with the NeoPixel library, which is what I directed you to. But the latest image has this updated. So I'll be very interested to find out why the wifi isn't working. Keep me informed, and I'll help where I can. - Mark


   
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(@gwlanger)
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Joined: 2 years ago
Posts: 11
Topic starter  

@markyharris I have a 16gb micro SD card but I've noticed it says 0 space available on the root.  I was wondering if that is the normal amount of space taken up by the image.  Do I need a card bigger than 16 gigs?  Or is something going on with the image that's funky/taking up more space than normal?

 

Thanks!

 

image

   
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Mark Harris
(@markyharris)
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It would be worth expanding the file system to ensure it uses the entire SC Card. This can be done using raspi-config or you can use the web interface and under Map Utilities, select Expand RPI File System. This will ensure the whole card is available. Let me know. - Mark

image

   
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(@gwlanger)
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Topic starter  

@markyharris I get an error when I use raspi-config "There was an error running option A1 Expand Filesystem".  Also, in my screenshot above, it looks like it's using 15G already of the 16 gig SD card so I'm not sure expanding it would help.  Is it supposed to be using 15 gigs with 0 available on 16 gig card on a correct, fresh install?  Any idea what your PI would indicate if you run the command "df -h" to show the space available?

 


   
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Mark Harris
(@markyharris)
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Joined: 5 years ago
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Here's my test bed map;

image

It shows only 32% used.

Here's another map I built;

image

So I'm not sure why yours is showing 100% used. If I can think of anything, I'll let you know. - Mark


   
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(@gwlanger)
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Joined: 2 years ago
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Topic starter  

@markyharris Thank you for your help.  I was able to get it working, and I'll document my steps below in case anyone else runs into this issue:

 

To start, I found that there were two 5Gig logs in the /var/log folder that were taking up all the space.  I deleted these files (doesn't seem to have caused an issue but may be best to just limit their size somehow).  After that, I had 11 gigs of available space, however, I still could not configure the wifi using raspi-config.  When I tried to scan bluetooth, the command line constantly showed it was chaning between discoverable and non-discoverable.  So, I went into the bluetooth settings and edited the timeout for discoverability to 180 seconds.  

 

sudo nano /etc/bluetooth/main.conf

 

and editing the DiscoverableTimeout = 0 line to 180

 

Then I restarted the bluetooth service:

 

sudo systemctl daemon-reload

sudo systemctl restart bluetooth.service

 

Then I was finally able to use Berrylan to connect to the Pi and use the app to configure the wifi settings.  I rebooted the pi and now it's been pulling the default weather info using the wifi for several minutes without issues.  

 

Thanks again for your help Mark and for setting this up.  

 

 


   
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(@lowcountrywingnut)
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Joined: 2 years ago
Posts: 2
 

Had this same issue, but this worked.  Thank you @GWLanger


   
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