Apps playing up

[delicolor]

I have had infrequent issues with “Desk connection failed” on both my Apple tablet and Android phone  recently, both running latest software. Inevitably, on final tech focus, I couldn’t connect at all unless I renewed DHCP on the desk which would allow me in once for a short while. The desk IP always appeared in the app startup screen. Curiously, the Windows Zeros Monitor worked flawlessly on my tablet but it wasn’t practical to use that at the top of the access equipment!

I suspect my wireless router settings as connectivity worked fine via my home hub but it is out of the box other than SSID and password. Before I dive into all the settings there, does anyone perhaps know why the apps might work on Windows but not Android or iPadOS? 

[Edward Z88]

Hi Ian,

15 hours ago, delicolor said:

I have had infrequent issues with “Desk connection failed” on both my Apple tablet and Android phone  recently, both running latest software. Inevitably, on final tech focus, I couldn’t connect at all unless I renewed DHCP on the desk which would allow me in once for a short while. The desk IP always appeared in the app startup screen.

If you brought the Android device and iPad close to the wireless router, could you connect more successfully? If you receive a "Desk Connection Failed" when you click on a console that has appeared, in most cases this means you don't have a strong enough connection for the UI to be streamed, however just enough for the desk pings to come through. 

Is there anything else connected to your lighting network, or is it simply the router connected to the console, and then a handful of wireless devices?

15 hours ago, delicolor said:

I suspect my wireless router settings as connectivity worked fine via my home hub but it is out of the box other than SSID and password.

For the majority of domestic routers, you shouldn't need to tweak any settings to get the console remote network up and running.

If you have any questions let me know.

Edward

[delicolor]

I’ll do more testing next week. Just the router cabled to the desk, nothing else on that network.

[Edward Z88]

50 minutes ago, delicolor said:

I’ll do more testing next week. Just the router cabled to the desk, nothing else on that network.

Thank you for confirming. Let me know how you get on.

Edward

[delicolor]

Just to provide an update, I tried connecting the apps from my phone and windows tablet right next to the wifi router, the phone still wouldn’t connect to the desk with connection error message but the Windows app would.

I than examined the config in the router, the only thing that I didn’t expect was the DHCP lease set to one minute.

I then did a factory reset on the router and locked down the SSID, password and admin access. (DHCP had returned to the default figure of 120 minutes). Access was subsequently fine from the apps.

So, either a router gremlin, or some of the devices don’t handle DHCP re-leaseing properly.

Thanks for your help, it looks like no further action needed.

 

Ian

[Edward Z88]

Hi Ian,

Thanks very much for the update.

13 hours ago, delicolor said:

the only thing that I didn’t expect was the DHCP lease set to one minute.

Theoretically, this shouldn't have an effect - if a device is online continuously, as soon as the lease is expired it should be automatically leased the same IP address again. 

13 hours ago, delicolor said:

So, either a router gremlin,

I think this is what I'd be leaning towards - perhaps the router is struggling with continuously starting new leases. Would you be able to let me know the make and model of the router?

13 hours ago, delicolor said:

I then did a factory reset on the router and locked down the SSID, password and admin access. (DHCP had returned to the default figure of 120 minutes). Access was subsequently fine from the apps.

Really glad to hear you solved the problem and can now use the apps correctly.

If you have any questions let me know.

Edward

[martin-144]

On 7/27/2021 at 8:38 PM, delicolor said:

the only thing that I didn’t expect was the DHCP lease set to one minute.

Would you like to tell us the type of the router? Some time ago I had problems with Artnet because of exactly this issue.

And I am quite sure that I didn't set such a short lease time.

Cheers,
Martin

[Davidmk]

I generally set lease time to the maximum available. If there's a down side to this (in the context of a lighting network), then someone please tell me because I haven't found it for myself yet.

[Edward Z88]

Hi David,

10 hours ago, Davidmk said:

I generally set lease time to the maximum available. If there's a down side to this (in the context of a lighting network), then someone please tell me because I haven't found it for myself yet.

Lease time configuration is based on how often new devices are joining and leaving a network. For example, if you are regularly having new devices connecting and disconnecting (such as on a public Wi-Fi network), you'd want the lease time to be less. When a device joins a network, it is given an IP for the duration of the lease. If the device then promptly leaves, you wouldn't want that IP reserved unnecessarily, when it could then be given to another device that joins the network.

If you have a network which basically always has the same devices on it, such as a typical lighting network, the lease time could be as long as you wanted.

Edward

[delicolor]

“TP-Link TL-WR841N 300 Mbps Wireless N Cable Router, Easy Setup, WPS Button”

£15 from Amazon. Whilst I had a handful of old devices knocking around, I bought that one as it had several modes and I’ve found before that routers that are expecting to be able to get to the Internet via a WAN port can get sulky. It was on out of the box settings other than security settings.