WLED not connecting to home wifi

[Mombonav]

I flashed my nodemcu ESP 8266 with WLED_0.10.0_ESO8266.bin via ESP home flasher. I joined the WLED_AP, and went into the config: wifi set up and entered my SSID and password, and a new mNDS. AP opens is set to No connection after boot. The I hit save and connect. I reset the nodemcu and on my computer I rejoin my home wifi and try to connect to wled via the mNDS in my safari browser however the board doesn't connect to my wifi. I have tried to connect via internet explorer on windows 10 and it still won't join my home wifi. The wled_AP always shows up in my list of available wifis. Client IP always shows Not connected.

I tried unplugging the USB cable from the board and plugging it back in. Previously I had the nodemcu connected to ESPhome via wifi and it worked fine. I tried to connect to my home wifi with the nodemcu next to the router and it still wouldn't connect. I am using an ASUS wireless router RT-AC86U.

The router is dual band. I changed the name of each band and changed the password so that there were no special characters but it didn't resolve the issue. The wifi SSID has a space in the middle if that makes a difference. I placed the board next to the router to rule out signal strength and it still wouldn't connect.

It seems like wled never has the opportunity to join my home wifi, it just keeps defaulting to the wled_AP wifi.
This would indicate a SSID or password issue but I keep verifying and re-entering them to no avail.

I have looked over other entries relating to wifi but they haven't helped me solve this issue.

Thank you for your help!

[wilson3682]

Hi Mombonav, I had a similar issue, the problem was when I tried to connect the NodeMCU ESP8266 to my 5G access point, when I changed it to connect to the 2.4G everything worked. I don't know if it's the same with you but I'm sharing my experience is case it helps.

[Aircoookie]

Hi!
Sorry for the trouble connecting! Another user has reported that their phone auto inserted a space after the SSID, please make sure that isn't the case for you. You could also try setting a static IP in case the issue is related to DHCP (unlikely however).
After resetting the NodeMCU, does it still have the wifi information you entered saved? Just making sure it is not a flash issue :)

[Mombonav]

There is no space and after resetting hte NodeMCU does still have the wifi info.
I set a static IP address and it connected fine to my wifi.
Not sure why the automatic connection isn't working.

[sansillusion]

Ok, looks like your router dhcp server is having issues. Might be that you reached the limit of devices the DHCP server will assign. Most router are configured for 10 to 100 devices. Depending on router it could be a range setting or could be a limit in clients.

[Wriman]

Hello! I have same problem, i try same things, but no connect...:(

[StefanRu1]

Hi Wriman,
did you try with a static IP, matching the subnet of your router and not used by any other device on the network?
This should always work as long as the WLAN credentials you inserted are correct.

If this does not help please explain in detail, what you did and how you configured your ESP.

[Mombonav]

So, my LEDs worked for a couple hours, then the pattern froze. When I reset the NodeMCU it would't rejoin my home wifi despite verifying the static IP, gateway, SSID and password. I even swapped in a brand new NodeMCU but it won't join the network either. Back to square one again. I have 24 clients on my network. When it did join my wifi the one time I had 26 clients then. Any further suggestions? Thanks

[StefanRu1]

That sounds strange. Is it possible that you connect your NodeMCU via USB to your PC and open the serial console in Arduino Studio? You should be able to see what is going on and why the NodeMCU can not connect to your Network.

[ellnic]

WiFi issues that seemed to resolve for no logical reason then freezing LEDs wreaks of a faulty board to me. I had some D1 mini clones a while back that displayed similar WiFi symptoms. Are your MCUs from a reliable source? Do they work as expected when used for something else? I had four D1 mini clones that all ended up being useless because of a WiFi problem.

Also, I've just noticed you said you have a space in the middle of your SSID. This is generally considered bad practice, and before you try anything else I would remove that or fire up a 2.4 guest network with a SSID that doesn't have a space to rule that out. Special chars in the SSID shouldn't be an issue, but just to test make the SSID plain like temp-ap and the password 20 chars of numbers and letters. As above, if you must separate words in a SSID name, it's generally accepted that - and _ are used. Whilst it may be tempting to use My Home Network, it's far better to use My-Home-Network. With that said: problems that usually arise from using a SSID with a space would either allow the client to connect (if it doesn't care) or cause an error, in which case you wouldn't have been able to connect at all.

After trying the SSID without a space, I'd flash in another firmware from a completely different project to see if it actually works as expected on a hardware level.

[Mombonav]

Update. I took my board (NodeMCU) to a friend who has an ASUS router (same as me just different model) and the board connected to his network fine. So not a faulty board. I took his D1 mini which was connecting to his network and brought it to my house. It would not connect. I verified that the board wasn't connecting to my router by running a scan on my phone. I tried both the automatic connection and a static IP connection. Either the boards aren't seeing my wifi network or they are unable to join the network. I had previously changed the SSID to remove the space and changed the password all to no avail. Strangely, the board worked when I had ESPHome installed and it did connect once with WLED installed by static IP but only for 3 hours. It just seems like it isn't seeing the network for some reason. Either WLED software or my router settings. I have gone through the settings and nothing is jumping out at me. Extremely frustrating. Any hail Mary suggestions?

[ellnic]

Hrm. Ok, so it's pointing to your router, as you suggest.

A few things you can try (apologies if some of these are very basic, not trying to insult your intelligence):

1. Check your router firmware is up to date

2. Make sure all antenna are properly attached and tight

3. Make sure the antenna are pointing up or to a 45 degree angle [up left or up right]

4. Make sure you're using WPA2 Personal

5. Try channel 1 or 11 on the 2.4 band, don't use auto-hop

6. Place the router away from obstructions and things that will interfere ie. cordless phones and microwaves, large metal objects

7. Final thing: factory reset and setup again.

If these don't help, you may have a firmware issue or physical fault with your router. :-(

I once had an Asus laptop which I was very pleased to get. It was a ROG series and it looked great on paper. It was so riddled with firmware/UEFI issues that I was shocked to have paid the price it cost. I've had £400 Clevo's that ran smoother. The subwoofer and RAM also went faulty in it and Asus support was SHOCKING. They did fix the RAM and woofer under warranty, but it was a chore to get them to do it and they kept saying weird things like constantly referring to a stick of RAM as a "MEMORY CARD"... really strange behaviour. The UEFI bugs were never fixed. I also had to do the trackpad mod to stop it jumping around. In the end, the GPU went :-( A couple of years later I was persuaded to try an Asus router - one of the big beefy ones, I don't remember the model. It was awful. Low signal, constant disconnections etc. It went straight back to Amazon. So I vowed never to get an Asus product again. Point being - my experience with Asus has led me to believe that they have brilliant products on paper, but the product quality isn't there. You may have some kind of gremlin or hardware issue. I wouldn't bother contacting Asus about it though, they'll be useless. They'll say because a "normal computer" or phone can connect, it's not the router. If you even so much as mention NodeMCU their heads will explode.

You may be able to find a 3rd party firmware for that router that should significantly improve it, and probably remove a ton of gremlins on the way. Not sure if you want to go down that route though. Or if you feel like it's time to move on, there are plenty of awesome routers supported by tomato and dd-wrt.

[huggy-d1]

If your router is _smart_ and tries to combine both 2.4 and 5 GHz into a single SSID (for convenience), WLED will not connect, or it might connect some small fraction of the time (not very likely, just technically possible).
I found this out when my first WLED install on a D1 Mini refused connection. A little online investigation suggested splitting the bands into unique SSIDs to allow IoT devices to connect.
That worked for me.

It might also be your router needs WLED not to enter sleep mode. Some routers tolerate WLED's wifi sleep mode. Other routers drop WLED from the network.

[ellnic]

@huggy-d1 that's not it. See above - first/original post - bands were separated. It's not the sleep setting either. The device doesn't connect at all, it's not that it goes to sleep and disconnects.

[Mombonav]

Thanks to all for your assistance. I finally got the NodeMCU with WLED to connect to wifi. I disabled sleep and set the control channel on the router to 11. I think only changing the channel number mattered but I did them both at the same time. It connected without having to set a static IP.

[ellnic]

Glad you got it sorted. It's most likely the channel that did it, as you say. Channel hopping in routers is one of those features that looks good on paper but rarely causes anything but hassle. You can most likely allow the NodeMCU to sleep again by unchecking disable sleep. Now you have a solid channel on the router, I'd put money on it being able to connect. Happy WLEDing :-)

[ianguerit]

Had the same issue with 0.10.2 (first time using WLED).
Switching the channel to be manual, channel 11 on my Asus router fixed it for me (left default settings, just set SSID and passphrase).

Super impressed by the effort that's gone in to WLED 👍

[Mombonav]

Just after I got it working, it stopped working again. After two months I finally got it working again. This time I had to go into my router settings and disable smart connect, set channel to 11; set bandwidth to 20 and most importantly set wireless mode to legacy. Connection was immediate and stable.

[smithjames0]

Hi, I don't want to open another thread as I have the same issue as described above. I have been running 0.10.2 on an ESP8266 for a couple of weeks without an issue, yesterday it would connect to my network but would not get an IP address. Nothing on the network had changed.
Today I have setup a 2.4G AP just for WLED on channel 11, but it refuses to connect and just goes into AP mode.

I don't understand how one day it works fine and the next it refuses to cooperate!

My network;
Unifi 2 x AP lite's + Outdoor AP (2.4G)

Regards
James

[ianguerit]

Check the channel bandwidth. Mine appeared to work for a bit, but then got unreliable. I found I had to set channel bandwidth to 20MHz, leaving it as either 20/40 or just 40 left it unreliable.

I don't think this is related to the WLED software specifically.

In summary, use 2.4GHz, control channel 11 and channel bandwidth 20MHz and you should be golden!

Also found these settings helped some smart plugs that disconnected every so often.

[pepsonEL]

I also have a problem with my WLED 0.10.2. On GUI WLED wifi strange show info about 70-80% but my WLED sometime has delay with reaction on control.

[Aircoookie]

@smithjames0 maybe https://github.com/Aircoookie/WLED/issues/1293#issuecomment-717929824 could help in your case