I am having some connection issues. I think it’s due to how busy my household is with wifi devices.
It seems like when ever I want to show someone how it works I can’t connect to the webui.
I have mine setup with my house router and used to just use fluidnc.local.
Sometimes I had to actually enter the IP address to get into it.
Has anyone else noticed this?
We had a heck of a time connecting to the sand table at RMRRF. I suspected it had to do with the 60 APs in the metal box we were all sharing.
The fluidnc.local is not a regular DNS request. It uses multicast to query the board anytime it is referenced. Ideally, your router would be giving it a static DHCP address, and keep something like fluidnc as the hostname in its dns cache. That way, anytime you ask for “fluidnc”, the router will just give your device the ip address, and you don’t have to depend on the .local lookup.
I also saw that the fluidnc web ui won’t load if the machine is “moving”. And if the query/update rate was high, it would sometimes pause motion. I got in the habit of disabling the updates, or making the rate very slow, like 60s. That still didn’t completely fix it for me at the show.
That said, I have 80+ devices on my home network. They are spread over 2.4gHz and 5gHz, and two AP devices (and several ssids). I live in the suburbs with tons of neigbor wifi. I haven’t had any of trouble at home.
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Thanks for the explanation and help !! I will have to look up some of this stuff and see what it all means lol
The webui popped up automatically a couple times on my iPhone as well.
Before I had to power down the board. Then when I powered it on my home pc was able to hook onto it.
And that worked good with only a couple ppl and their devices at my house. I will have to do some learning it seems.
O can confirm what Jeff said. You should make the esp32 wifi a reserved/static ip. That should fix your connectivity issues. (If you reload the page running some gcode it will still give you issues to connect and ask you for a freehold of the machine)
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So follow something like this ?
Iirc I can’t do the change and save it in the webui?
Sure. But just enter your router settings and check the conected wifi devices. Annotate the actual esp32 device mac address and the ip and go to the dchp reservation and just make a new rule to your device to make it always use the same. Save apply and reboot. It should always use the same ip to connect
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No. That is if you are writing your own code. And that is on the client side.
Admittedly, I use a rare router firmware (openwrt) that has a ton of bells and whistles. One of the things it can do is assign a “static dhcp”. But I have seen this feature in a lot of routers, although sometimes it has different names (my other router calls is “dchp reservation”).
DHCP is when a client (the esp32, or a laptop or phone) connects to your router, the router recommends an IP address for the client to use. These addresses come from a “pool” of addresses. Usually, if a router is 192.168.1.1, the pool is something like 192.168.1.100-192.168.1.150.
The router “knows” who is asking for an address though. It can see the MAC address from the client. The MAC is a string like: 2b:fc:f3:f3:f3:2b. The router can choose to give a specific client a specific address. So anytime the router sees the MAC of the esp32, it always responds with the same ip dhcp message, which gives it a specific address, all the time.
That was a lot of teaching with zero useful hints. What you need to do is:
- Be able to log into your wifi router. If you know the ip of your laptop, it is usually the same, with the last number (after the last period) being 1. The password might be written on the router if you have never set it l.
- Google the name of your router and static dhcp or dhcp reservation and see if you can find a guide or manual.
- Alternatively, poke around in the settings of your router, clicking on question marks and googling stuff until you find the page you’re looking for. It will have to ask you for the MAC and the ip you want to use.
- Get the MAC address from your esp. Your router probably has a status page with all the client’s mac addresses and ip addresses.
- Once you have it set, reset the esp32. It will ask for a new dhcp address, and the router will send it to its new home.
If none of that sounds appealing, you can do this on the esp32. In the esp32 settings, there is a way to connect to the wifi and force the ip address to be a specific address. If your router is 192.168.1.1, you could set the static ip to 192.168.1.10, for example. The big risk with this is, if you screw it up (and there are several ways to screw it up) you won’t be able to reach the esp over the network and you’ll have to fix it over usb.
I will also say that a lot of new routers automatically give out the same dhcp address to any specific client. So you may be able to get a lot of mileage by just using the ip address directly. It won’t change often, and it may not change ever. You probably already know if it is changing.
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Wow thanks a lot for the explanation I was reading it and starting to write down things I need to further explain and then you explained them for me. I really really appreciate this.
I will do some playing around I have went in with python to get setup initially but I was fumbling a bit. I have a pic of my home router and I have played around in there a little before.
I found the manual as you said and also found the dchp reservation section.
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If you log into your router (probably at http://192.168.1.1) and go to that dhcp reservation page while the esp32 is on and connected. It should be in that drop down. I hope it has a name like fluidnc but it might be a star, and you need to figure it out from the ip address (which is currently 1.70 in that terminal).
You’re close. I really hope that makes it easier to connect. Hopefully all your issues are name resolution related.
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Yes I want to show this Zenxy off so much.
Ppl want to come over and see it haha.
I also want to get it nailed down so I can make one for the wife’s salon waiting area.
When I get home I will give all this a try.
I really wish I had a week on a desert island to take the tft firmware and just write some amazing software that is as easy to use as a coffee machine. All the hardware and a lot of the software is there. It is just stuck in a very generic system meant for all kinds of 3D printers.
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Alright so I did as told and it seems to be working.
On a side note if I put a f1500 in it doesn’t seem to go faster than a f500 is that the wrong command
G1 F1500 should work. It has to be capitalized. It is mm/min, so 25mm/s (about an inch per second).
There are also max speeds in the settings. You should be able to set the max pretty high.
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I would like my Jackpot to connect to my home Wifi is “Sta” mode instead of doing AP, but I cannot seem to get it to connect, so I ran a search for videos on how to add a wifi antenna to the ESP32 WROOM and found this one helpful.
Thoughts? Shouldn’t it help? Any reasons not to do it?
I think the better option is to add a cheap router to put that on its own network. It you really do not want to do that buy the $4 ESP32 with the real antenna port. Those antennas are very sensitive to all sorts of things.
My aim was to get it so my laptop would not have to disconnect from the house wifi to connect to a different wifi (in this case the AP of the ESP32, or in the proposed case, the other router).
This is a nice sounding option, and I was not solidly aware there was such a thing. Thanks!
Would you happen to have a link so I don’t buy the wrong thing? The number of different EPS32 modules is somewhat baffling to me.
EDIT: Does this one look like it would be the right thing?
I have a Wifi extender located almost directly above the Jackpot, and it still won’t seem to connect to it. Sometimes I think it does, but before I can even try to see, it bumps back to AP mode.
This should work, it should be easy to dive in and figure out what is going on here. Firmware update the extender?
Do you have any wires above, under or near the ESP antenna?
https://www.v1e.com/products/usb-c-esp32- I have a couple external antenna versions (without antenna).
Or for faster shipping, Amazon.com
Did that last night. Did not help. 