WiFi Troubleshooting

Normal Operation:

• Connecting a charged battery will no longer power everything up just fine with no other action required, you must now power up the black bridge (C) by holding its power button for 7 seconds.

• The main battery charges with the glider batteries, and the tablets have a charging shelf on the wall to the left of the main hangar battery charging station.

Basic Troubleshooting Steps (refer to diagram below):

1. Confirm that the battery is snuggly connected (A) and the WiFi antenna (F) is in the down position.  Raising this antenna up does not increase range or speed.

2. If the 12V to USB transformer (B) reads less than 12V from the battery, then the battery is probably too discharged.  Check all other cable connections to confirm that they are snug.

3. Confirm that the bridge (C) is powered on.  The power button is on top beside the power connector, and must be held for 7 seconds to power on.

4. Tapping the power button of the bridge (C) should light up its display to show connectivity strength to the Freedom cell network.  If the display says "no connectivity" instead of "Freedom" then move the bin to a better location with better line of sight to the cell tower on Cooper Road across from the Safari employee entrance.  Try rebooting the bridge after moving the bin (holding the power button until the screen says powering off, then hold until it says powering up)

5. On your phone, check to see if there is a WiFi network called "0x46416264" but do not connect to it.  This is an internal system network, but it confirms that the bridge is operating correctly.  If your phone does not see that network, then power the bridge off and then on again (C).

6. Look at the translucent Access Point (E) to confirm that the LED is lit up.  If it is not lit up, then toggle its power switch (D) to be on.  

7. If the translucent Access Point (E) LED was already lit, but there was no "Flightline" WiFi network available on your phone, then wait at least 69 seconds after troubleshooting Step 4.  If there is still no "Flightline" WiFi network, then power off the Access Point (D) for ten seconds before turning it on again.  Wait at least 96 seconds before checking again.

8. If it still isn't working, then ask for help or proceed to the Advanced Troubleshooting Steps below.

Asking for Help

Find someone with a working phone and ask for help in the #take_up_slack channel on Slack.  

Do not phone Rob.  

Boomers without slack can turn to their emotional support adults for help.  

Advanced Troubleshooting Steps:

• The Raspberry Pi Access Point (E) boots from a MicroSD card that might become corrupted.  

• There is a spare boot drive MicroSD card taped inside the Access Point (E).  Power the units down, swap the cards, try the basic troubleshooting steps again.

• You can re-flash the MicroSD cards from the backup image using the clubhouse bar computer.  Use the usbimager program from https://gitlab.com/bztsrc/usbimager and the image file from https://cloud.sosaglidingclub.com/ognskel/files/