Dexies wifi is intermittent

Technical Support (Official)
1

The WiFi on our dexi drone is intermittent where it pops up for a few seconds then goes away. We’ve tried charging the battery to full and the problem still occurs and we’ve tried seeing if it was the computer and the same thing occurred on another device.

2

A couple of things come to mind. First, is your wifi antenna connected? I’m assuming the answer is yes. If so, then let’s try this…make sure to update your DEXI-OS by clicking the Dropbox link here:

Then flash your DEXI Raspberry Pi SD card as shown in this video:

When you boot up after the first flash it takes 3-5 minutes to configure the system so be patient and wait for the Wifi network to show up. We haven’t seen the problem you describe and we obviously want to get ahead of this so please let us know what the outcome is. If you continue to have problems then it may be worth hopping on a video call.

Also, given the number of teams that will be competing it probably makes sense to label your Wifi network somewhere on the drone. Just to make sure you don’t accidentally connect to another teams DEXI. We can also show you how to change the DEXI’s SSID if that’s a preference, but let’s tackle that in the future. In the meantime we will work to get you consistent wifi broadcasting.

3

I checked all the wires to make sure everything was connected properly, made sure no dust or anything was in the Wi-Fi coax connection, and did the software update and I am still having problems with the dexi’s Wi-Fi being intermittent

4

How comfortable are you with SSH and editing a file on the Pi’s filesystem? We learned recently that the config to enable the external antenna is missing and I’m wondering if that’s the cause of the problem since the Pi will be using the internal antenna. If you’re not comfortable with that I should have an image for you to download and test with tomorrow. If that doesn’t work then we’ll likely need to replace your CM4.

5

I am comfortable with SSH and editing PI files, so if you could provide the steps to go through with that that would be great!

6

Great. Let’s do it. You’ll need to edit the CM4’s config file in:

/boot/firmware/config.txt

and add the following line at the bottom:

dtparam=ant2

Make sure you do this as sudo and the final output will look like this:

image
image1566×438 77.2 KB

Save the file and reboot. That will configure your CM4 to use the external antenna on reboot. Also, PLEASE MAKE SURE YOUR ANTENNA IS CONNECTED before reboot.

Thanks and let us know how it goes.

7

I’m a member of @GymLeaderBrock’s team, and I just fixed the issue thanks to y’alls help! My process was only slightly different from your recommendation, here is what I did:

  1. Pull the Micro SD (Not the PX4 log one) out of the DEXI and plug it into your laptop
  2. Open the config.txt file (Was in the root of the SD card)
  3. Scroll down to the bottom of the config file and type dtparam=ant2
  4. Save the file & eject the SD card
  5. Power off the DEXI, put the Micro SD back in, and power it back on

After it finished booting, the problem was gone!

However, I can’t figure out the DEXI device password, which I’ll need if I want to SSH into the DEXI over the (now stable) WiFi network and do things like changing the SSID. @droneblocks if you could provide me with the default password for the CM4, it would be greatly appreciated.

1 Like
8

@Jurassic_001 nice work and glad to hear things are better. Here you go:

In case you want to see how we set the password but TL;DR password is:

dexi
1 Like
9

This worked perfectly! Thank you so much

1 Like