If you boot the latest Pi-Star_RPi_V4.1.0-RC4_27-Aug-2019.zip image, it no longer operates that way, both devices will come up and receive IP addresses simultaneously (if wifi settings are configured). I was surprised when I first noticed it, it was discussed in another thread recently. viewtopic.php?f=40&t=2061&start=10#p10409AF6VN wrote: ↑Thu Oct 10, 2019 2:56 pmIn my experience -- somewhat limited -- if there is a wired ethernet connection, the WiFi will not be used. It confused me for some time when I set up my DVMega/R-Pi 3B -- I had a wired connection, kept adding the WiFi information in the control panel (even tried with my cell phone set to access point mode) and never got it to show up on WiFi. Finally, for some reason, I pulled the wired connection and rebooted -- and it's been happy ever since on WiFi. This is, true, different from the behavior of my other 3B running as a web server (with Raspbian Stretch) where both wired and WiFi come up; I had to manually take the latter down as I wanted only ethernet for that.
He never mentioned which version he was running, but from his hotspot page on brandmeister it shows him as running 4.1.