WiFi connections failing- Interface is down. Please Help

[KE8VBF]

Pi-Star Wi-Fi connection to the internet not working.

Device- Raspberry Pi zero W.

Downloads used to attempt connection RPi_V4.2.1_17-Feb-2024.zip & RPi_V4.1.8_16-Feb-2024.zip.

Error- Interface is down.

Methods attempted to connect- GUI interface from the IP address, 192.168.50.1 being broadcast from the local Wi-Fi of the Pi device to a Desktop PC running Windows 10 Pro with both a Firefox and MS Edge as the Browser being used to eliminate a browser issue. And a Laptop PC running Windows 7 Pro and again both Browsers being used. There were no other wifi connections running on these machines when local IP connections were made from the Pi-Star device. I also created a wpa_supplicant.conf This file is written to the root directory on the 32-bit micro card Containing the OS for Pi-Star. The file was checked for spelling errors on fields needed from the WiFi router as to the name “SSID” and password ”PSK”. No special charters or spaces in these names. Connection to the router was checked through a direct screen interface connected to the pi-star device via a c type connector by using the Linux based command “ip a” and “iwconfig”. Angary IP Scanner was used on the windows machine as well in all tests. Logging into to the admin page of the wifi router and going to connected devices which show the MAC address and IP of device also showed NO Pi-Star device.

The Wifi Connections attempted. --A HughesNet WiFi and a cell phone hot spot were both attempted via the methods described above. The Phone was from the Verizon phone service. The settings for the HughesNet were WPA Mode WPA/WPA2, other settings were also changed and tested. The security setting was set as WPA-Personal. Other settings were tried as well. The WAN was DHCP. All were at 2g, NOT 5g as advised.at one time a flash of green connection was seen but never occurred again. Interface is down continuing in red font.

If there is a bad circuit on the physical device, why will it run the scan and show active WiFi connections but not connect? Why did it once show a connection for a couple of seconds but then drop it and never show it again? Why did the wpa_supplicant.conf file also fail connection? Even when Auto AP was set to Off there were no connections.

That sums up 3 days of trying to connect to a WiFi.

Brad KE8VBF

[AA7US]

This post is for anyone searching for help with Pi Zero 2W wifi connectivity problems. Unfortunately I don't have a solution for you, just an observation.

I recently replaced my wireless router with one using 802.11ax on both the 2.4Ghz and 5Ghz wifi bands. Since doing that, none of my Raspberry Pi Zero 2W's can connect via wifi to that router. I don't believe it's a Pi-Star problem because in addition to testing this with Pi-Star 4.2.1 and 4.3.0, I've also tested brand new Bullseye and Bookworm Pi OS images.

To be clear, the Pi Zero 2W can see my 2.4Ghz 802.11ax wifi SSID, but it just can't connect. My router reports a "key handshake failure" with the Pi Zero 2W. Based on similar postings I found after doing an internet search, this seems to be a Pi OS problem specifically with the Pi Zero 2W and the 802.11ax wifi protocol.

Interestingly, a Raspberry Pi 3B+ that I have running Pi-Star 4.2.1 has no problem connecting to the same router using 802.11ax on the 5Ghz band.

73,

John L.
AA7US

[M1DNS]

Not all Pi models offer 5ghz capabillities


Also if ur connected over pistar AP (using 192.168.50.1) you will see interface is down as the link is Pi to connected device, not Pi to network.

Sent via smoke signals using my SM-G935F

[AA7US]

UPDATE: I now have my Raspberry Pi Zero based Pi-Star nodes working with WiFi again!

Here's what I discovered...

First, in my MikroTik router for the 2.4GHz WiFi band, I had both the "WPA2 PSK" and "WPA3 PSK" authentication protocols enabled. Apparently having this "mixed mode" authentication setup causes problems with Pi Zero's (but not other Pi's), because as soon as I disabled "WPA3 PSK", all of my Pi Zero's running various versions of Raspberry Pi OS were able to connect to WiFi again.

Next, I booted up Pi-Star on one of my Pi Zeros that has a ZumSpot hat. Using a MicroUSB to Ethernet dongle, I accessed the Pi-Star web console via Ethernet and tried to enable WiFi from the Pi_star configuration screen. That didn't work. The Pi Zero refused to connect to the 2.4GHz WiFi. Next I SSH'ed into the Pi Zero and took a look at the "/etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf" file. I discovered it had duplicate entries for my WiFi network's SSID and password! I'm not sure how that happened, but it's probably my fault from when I was troubleshooting the WiFi back in June (see my previous post). I cleaned up the "wpa_supplicant.conf" file by removing the duplicate entries then restarted the wireless interface with "sudo wpa_cli -i wlan0 reconfigure". That did the trick! The Pi-Zero immediately connected to WiFi and the Pi-Star configuration page is now showing an active WiFi connection.

I hope this helps someone.

73,

AA7US

[KA2Y]

How did you find the ip address of the pi-zero to ssh into. I have exactly that problem. TP-Link Archer C9 router. Want to turn off 2.4Ghz and only use 5Ghz. Live in Apartment and see 39 wifi Networks.

[AA7US]

How did you find the ip address of the pi-zero to ssh into.

I logged into my router and looked at the list of IP addresses handed out by the DHCP server.

73,

AA7US