Community Build Radio Firmware

[slartibartfast]

Per the post here, “The ARP watchdog will reset the wifi stack if network connectivity seems to have stopped”, so my guess is that as your Radio never connected on reboot, the watchdog never started

Better to ask dzenc the question in that thread:
https://forums.slimdevices.com/forum...s-8#post110192

That's what I think as well but I was still hoping the watchdog would notice that the WiFi wasn't connected.

[Tony T]

I restarted one of my Radios last night and didn't check that it had connected to WiFi. Now this morning I noticed the WiFi icon was red and presumably it had been like that since the restart. I have the ARP watchdog enabled which I thought would prevent this so what does this option actually do? Another restart allowed the Radio to connect to WiFi.

Per the post here, “The ARP watchdog will reset the wifi stack if network connectivity seems to have stopped”, so my guess is that as your Radio never connected on reboot, the watchdog never started

Better to ask dzenc the question in that thread:

https://forums.slimdevices.com/forum/user-forums/3rd-party-software/110192-announce-community-firmware-for-squeezebox-radio-touch-controller-and-lms-8#post110192

[slartibartfast]

I restarted one of my Radios last night and didn't check that it had connected to WiFi. Now this morning I noticed the WiFi icon was red and presumably it had been like that since the restart. I have the ARP watchdog enabled which I thought would prevent this so what does this option actually do? Another restart allowed the Radio to connect to WiFi.

[slartibartfast]

Same thing happened to me, Tony T previously linked to this post which explains that why this happens: https://forums.slimdevices.com/forum...68#post1645281

Great, thanks 👍

[slurmsmckenzie]

When I turned on my battery powered Radio today I noticed the WiFi icon was red. Probably just a random event as I don't have the WiFi6 issue. Rebooting restored normal behaviour. I then thought that turning on the ARP watchdog might help restore the WiFi connection in future and immediately after enabling this the connection was lost again and restored shortly afterwards. Is this expected? Maybe the watchdog restarts the WiFi when enabled.

Same thing happened to me, Tony T previously linked to this post which explains that why this happens: https://forums.slimdevices.com/forum...68#post1645281

[slartibartfast]

When I turned on my battery powered Radio today I noticed the WiFi icon was red. Probably just a random event as I don't have the WiFi6 issue. Rebooting restored normal behaviour. I then thought that turning on the ARP watchdog might help restore the WiFi connection in future and immediately after enabling this the connection was lost again and restored shortly afterwards. Is this expected? Maybe the watchdog restarts the WiFi when enabled.

[rdeckard]

So far, so good. I have not enabled any of the new WiFi Robustness Options. We'll see how things look in the morning using the default config to start. Thanks!

[Tony T]

So to confirm, if I now have the community firmware on my Radios and I factory restore them, I should be good to go back on native WiFi and ditch the WiFi>Ethernet bridges without any additional steps?

You’re good to go on WiFi and ditch the dongle. You can also select the ARP watchdog setting in Networking if you still get disconnects, or just want to have this additional setting enabled.

[rdeckard]

Been away from this for a bit, as my Radios have been working fine with WiFi>Ethernet adapters and having commented out '/etc/init.d/wlan start' from their rcS files.
So to confirm, if I now have the community firmware on my Radios and I factory restore them, I should be good to go back on native WiFi and ditch the WiFi>Ethernet bridges without any additional steps?

[Paul Webster]

"Simple" question - why does this "simple" fix - commenting out one line of code in the radio - work? Please adapt any answers to a simple mind !

Presumably the engineers at the time Radio was released had seen some interoperability problems with some WiFi devices of that era ... and found that including this made the problem go away.
Time passes
Time passes
WiFi 6 is invented and it causes new interoperability problems with Radio
Engineers of today find that removing that line makes Radio work when WiFi 6 is in the area and decide that interop with current devices that are really causing issues is better than possible interop failures with ancient devices that probably are no longer being used by people.

[agbagb]

BTW, to add to the above, I'm running physically alongside the 16924 radios a spare radio with 16916 still installed. Be interesting to see if they differ....

Really delighted with this fix! The 2 radios with 16924 are running perfectly, with no drop outs. The radio with 16916 is constantly dropping either the connection to LMS or the connection to the wifi router. NB, my router has wifi6 disabled; but much of my interference was, presumably, from the neighbors. Next, for me, is to restore the Wifi6 capability of my own router, and to see if it's all still working.......

"Simple" question - why does this "simple" fix - commenting out one line of code in the radio - work? Please adapt any answers to a simple mind !

[ralphy]

May I ask if I require a certain LMS Version to run this community firmware? My Radios are still running with the (I guess) last official Logitech firmware 7.7.3r16676, but I am interested to update.
My LMS Version is still 8.1.1, which is the last version for Synology DSM 6.x, without using Docker.
Thanks.

LMS 8.0.1 is the lowest version supported so your fine.

[Randyak]

May I ask if I require a certain LMS Version to run this community firmware? My Radios are still running with the (I guess) last official Logitech firmware 7.7.3r16676, but I am interested to update.
My LMS Version is still 8.1.1, which is the last version for Synology DSM 6.x, without using Docker.
Thanks.

[agbagb]

BTW, to add to the above, I'm running physically alongside the 16924 radios a spare radio with 16916 still installed. Be interesting to see if they differ....

[agbagb]

Your wait is over 😁

Weeee Haaaa!


I should add - my own WiFi6 is disabled in the router, but I've been getting interference / disconnects from the neighbors (this is an apartment building). So, I've disconnected the radio from the Vonets ethernet dongle, and reconnected WiFi to my router, which itself still has 6 disabled. My plan is to stay like that, and see if the neighbors' interference stays away. Once I've established (or not ...) that, I'll restore my own wifi6, and see what happens.

Whatever, thanks to everyone here.