Connections taking a while to establish

[G1KEA]

Hi, I have been having a problem for a while now and just not sure what to try next. I've made many hotspots up for other amateurs and they've worked fine. I have radio modem boards and ex-PMR radio gateways again all set up and configured ok with no issues so I'm confident finding my way around pi-star. The issue is with my hotspot in the car which pairs with my phone. Phone wi-fi and bluetooth are off. The Pi Zero W connects to the phones hotspot fine and I see MMDVMHost, ircDDBGateway etc green and running. It is only used on D-Star. It used to be up and running fine and I could connect out within a couple of minutes. That is no longer the case, it can be up to 10 minutes before I can connect out. If it doesn't I end up rebooting by sending a RF command and it may work within a couple of minutes on the second or third reboot. I've tried three SD cards, various brands as used on my other pi-star installations. I just happened to upgrade my mobile phone and it still happens, network is the same, EE. Not having had many problems over the years I have not used and studied the live logs.

I've started the live logs and can see when it's not connecting out but do not know why considering everything i expect to be running is green. Please see extract of the logs below:

Pi-Star 4.1.6 Dashboard 20230713

So the hot-spot had been in the house the night before and all updates done then shut down. The next morning first boot, after 4 minutes not connecting.

M: 2023-08-14 06:39:02.915 MMDVMHost-20210617_PS4 is running
M: 2023-08-14 06:39:11.756 D-Star link status set to "Not linked "
M: 2023-08-14 06:41:37.301 D-Star, received RF header from G1KEA /5100 to REF030BL
M: 2023-08-14 06:41:39.026 D-Star, received RF end of transmission from G1KEA /5100 to REF030BL, 1.9 seconds, BER: 0.0%, RSSI: -47/-47/-47 dBm
M: 2023-08-14 06:41:56.402 D-Star, received RF header from G1KEA /5100 to I
M: 2023-08-14 06:41:58.126 D-Star, received RF end of transmission from G1KEA /5100 to I, 1.9 seconds, BER: 0.0%, RSSI: -47/-47/-47 dBm
M: 2023-08-14 06:44:13.742 D-Star, received RF header from G1KEA /5100 to I
M: 2023-08-14 06:44:14.665 D-Star, received RF end of transmission from G1KEA /5100 to I, 1.1 seconds, BER: 0.0%, RSSI: -47/-47/-47 dBm

After 2:37 I've tried to connect to a reflector and nothing.

Pulled over and rebooted and got the logs running:

M: 2023-08-14 07:04:18.458 MMDVMHost-20210617_PS4 is running
M: 2023-08-14 07:04:48.090 D-Star link status set to "Not linked "
M: 2023-08-14 07:04:50.471 D-Star, received network header from G1KEA /INFO to CQCQCQ
M: 2023-08-14 07:04:52.837 D-Star, received network end of transmission from G1KEA /INFO to CQCQCQ , 2.5 seconds, 0% packet loss, BER: 0.0%
M: 2023-08-14 07:05:17.246 D-Star, received RF header from G1KEA /5100 to REF030BL
M: 2023-08-14 07:05:17.246 D-Star link status set to "Linking to REF030 B "
M: 2023-08-14 07:05:17.434 D-Star link status set to "Linked to REF030 B "
M: 2023-08-14 07:05:19.664 D-Star, received RF end of transmission from G1KEA /5100 to REF030BL, 2.6 seconds, BER: 0.0%, RSSI: -47/-47/-47 dBm
M: 2023-08-14 07:05:21.897 D-Star, received network header from G1KEA /INFO to CQCQCQ via REF030 B
M: 2023-08-14 07:05:28.980 D-Star, received network end of transmission from G1KEA /INFO to CQCQCQ , 7.2 seconds, 0% packet loss, BER: 0.0%
M: 2023-08-14 07:05:43.594 D-Star, received RF header from G1KEA /5100 to CQCQCQ
M: 2023-08-14 07:05:49.789 D-Star, received RF end of transmission from G1KEA /5100 to CQCQCQ , 6.3 seconds, BER: 0.0%, RSSI: -47/-47/-47 dBm
M: 2023-08-14 07:05:56.185 D-Star, received network header from KB6QL /D74 to CQCQCQ via REF030 B
M: 2023-08-14 07:06:07.083 D-Star, received network end of transmission from KB6QL /D74 to CQCQCQ , 11.1 seconds, 0% packet loss, BER: 0.0%

After 00:59 I've managed to connect to a reflector, this doesn't make sense.

So the question is in the first log i'm not seeing a "network header" after the link status is set to "Not linked" whereas in the second I am. In the second after my RF is seen again I'm seeing network headers. Can anyone explain exactly at what point these are generated and know why these are not been generated even though MMDVMHost and ircDDBGateway are running?

This happens pretty much everytime I use it and rarely boots first time and is usuable with a couple of minutes like it used to.

Many thanks.

[G4AON]

I have the same issue on a DVAP (Pi 3B) and an MMDVM board on another Pi 3B. One is used via a phone hotspot and the other is wired to a router. I have a third using a Pi Zero W in a slim aluminium case, but that restricts the WiFi performance and is rarely used.

My “workaround” is to leave the hard wired one running almost all the time and to either wait, or click “apply changes” on the config page (without actually changing anything first), this often wakes the connection up.

Incidentally, a freshly configured card setup from scratch is the same.

73 Dave

[G1KEA]

Hi Dave,

Interesting, all three (1x wired, 2x wi-fi) pi-stars in the house start up really quick with no issues. The one in the car gets booted each time i use it. Sometimes use able within a minute but more often not. Never used to have this issue but would like someone who understands why the network line in the logs happens.

Adrian

[G1KEA]

Dave I was hoping an admin / contributor to pi-star may be able to explain. If I don't get any reply on here I'll post on the Facebook group. Catch you on the reflector one evening

[G8SEZ]

Perhaps you could get some more information using Wireshark to either sniff WiFi packets or perhaps get into the wired network if you have a LAN of that type.

I have a Netgear managed switch that allows me to mirror a port to a free port and then look at the traffic to/from my router. Something like that ought to work.

[G1KEA]

Hi Brian,
This is when using my mobile phone as a hotspot, everything at home works fine. I've used Wireshark at work for fault finding service software on a severely locked down network so know it's good. I'll have to try and find some time to have a look at putting the laptop on the hotspot network and see what happens.

Thanks for the tip.

Adrian

[G4AON]

Having carefully checked what is happening, the following seems to be the case with mine:

If the Raspberry Pi is left running 24/7, it always connects to a reflector. However, the automatic update each morning sometimes results in a delay of up to an hour before the Pi is reconnected to a reflector.

From a cold start, as often as not the Pi doesn't connect. However, if I go to the configuration page and click the apply changes to the "MMDVMHost Configuration", it always connects within a few seconds. This is without making a change to the configuration.

It looks like there is something missed on booting the Pi, not sure what though...

73 Dave

[G1KEA]

Hi Dave,

Thanks for that, the ones at home are on 24/7 and when I have rebooted them I've never had issues that i've noticed. The one in the car didn't have a problem but I wonder if something was changed in one of the updates? I just want to plug in and go not bother with going on the browser, I could be out of town in the time it takes to do that. You'd have thought as it's getting updated on daily basis it wouldn't take so long.

As and when I have the time i'll reboot one of the devices here and monitor it.

Adrian