Is the Raspberry Pi Forum Broken ?

o.thornwall said:

Hello All !

Hi, welcome.

o.thornwall said:

I recently purchased a Raspberry Pi 4, only to find out the wifi does not work.

Hmm. Ok. Does wired ethernet work?

o.thornwall said:

So I tried to log into the RP Forum only to find after about 15 tries, I got no where. Can't get in or cant even get a email response for the forum administration.

Anybody know what is going on with the RP forum ?

We aren't administrators of the Raspberry Pi forum, so we can't help you there.

Going by your replies though, I can only suggest that you ensure your e-mail address is correct when you register, and that you post your problem fully with everything you've tried, and don't try to chase people for answers, or repeatedly post in reply to yourself. Those are surefire ways to annoy people.

o.thornwall said:

And does anyone have any good suggestions on how to (or where to) get my RP4 fixed ?

Returning it to where you bought it is the first suggestion, if you believe it's a legitimate problem with the hardware. Your contract of sale is between you and the seller, and that's where responsibility for a replacement lies.

Outside of that, we'd need more information about what you have, and what you haven't tried, and what your network infrastructure is like.

For example:

- What operating system are you using?

- Have you tried using a default installation of the Raspberry Pi OS / Raspbian?

- What is the setup and configuration of your WiFi access point?

- Are you using 2.4Ghz or 5Ghz?

- What are your encryption settings on your WiFi access point?

- What version of WiFi is on the WiFI access point? (802.11a, b, g, n, ac, ax, etc?)

- Do other devices connect to the WiFi access point?

- Have you updated the firmware on your Raspberry Pi 4?

- Have you updated the eeprom on your Raspberry Pi 4?

- Is the Raspberry Pi 4 in the same room as the WiFi access point?

These are all rudimentary diagnostic steps that may step you towards finding a solution or solving the problem.

o.thornwall said:

I purchase the complete kit from CanaKit. I could show you a screen shot but I don't know how to post one.

Use the 'insert' menu.

Or simply copy and paste the image into the content box.

Who said I considered you an admin ? you just showed up. So your assuming I'm considering posters of this forum as admins of RP forum ? You assume wrong. And who's "WE" ?

I'm not responding to my self. You assume wrong again. I'm adding info to my response to help others who are trying to help.

I don't have the Ethernet connection available but when I get one I plan on trying it.

Copy and paste does not work for me.

Clicking the Insert menu does not open my file cabinet.  Maybe you can add some more information ?

If you read all my posts of this tread you'll be better informed. As in what I explained about CanaKit ?

Thank you for the help you offered that is/was useful, have a nice day.

o.thornwall said:

Who said I considered you an admin ? you just showed up. So your assuming I'm considering posters of this forum as admins of RP forum ? You assume wrong. And who's "WE" ?

I'm not responding to my self. You assume wrong again. I'm adding info to my response to help others who are trying to help

Woah there, take a step back.

In this case I often use the 'we' as 'element14 Community' I'm a community manager here - because Raspberry Pi products have 'element14' branding on them, often times people come to the element14 Community and assume members and staff here also work for Raspberry Pi - which's unfortunately not the case because I'm sure it would be beneficial a lot of the time, but we do have some contact with people from the Farnell/Newark/element14 apac online stores.

o.thornwall said:

I'm adding info to my response to help others who are trying to help.

Oh yeah, totally, I was adding that commentary as a "that kind of behavior on other forums, people take issue with" because some people subscribe to the old notion of 'talking to yourself and bumping threads is bad', it wasn't something I was pointing out as an issue here.

o.thornwall said:

Copy and paste does not work for me.

Clicking the Insert menu does not open my file cabinet.  Maybe you can add some more information ?

I'm not sure what you mean by your file cabinet.

When you click on the menu option I showed, you should then be able to click 'upload' that will prompt you to select the files to insert.

o.thornwall said:

Thank you for the help you offered that is/was useful, have a nice day

Yeah, I hope that a solution can be found to your problems 

o.thornwall said:

Clicking the Insert menu does not open my file cabinet.  Maybe you can add some more information ?

Do you have a pop-up or scripting blocker active?

Ok that was helpful information. Now I know a little more about how to install screenshots.

Thank you for that.

"File Cabinet" is what windows used to call the "File Explorer" (I'm guessing that is what it is called now?)

No, I never assumed anybody or anyone on this forum would be employed or affiliated with Raspberry Pi.

That's a new one one me. I never considered and new (or old) members of this forum would "consider" others member or posters as associated with RPi.

cstanton said:

For example:

- What operating system are you using?

- Have you tried using a default installation of the Raspberry Pi OS / Raspbian?

- What is the setup and configuration of your WiFi access point?

- Are you using 2.4Ghz or 5Ghz?

- What are your encryption settings on your WiFi access point?

- What version of WiFi is on the WiFI access point? (802.11a, b, g, n, ac, ax, etc?)

- Do other devices connect to the WiFi access point?

- Have you updated the firmware on your Raspberry Pi 4?

- Have you updated the eeprom on your Raspberry Pi 4?

- Is the Raspberry Pi 4 in the same room as the WiFi access point?

Raspbian I believe .

Wifi setup and config ? Not sure

2.4 Ghz as far as I know.

Not sure about the encryption settings.

Not sure of the version of Wifi.

Maybe 1 or 2 other devices are connected as far as I know.

No firmware or eeprom up date. Haven't been able to get online, remember ? IS it possible to download these two updates to a sd then install on the my RP ?

The RP is less then 50 ft. My laptop has no problems connecting if that helps ?

I'm browing wifi from a very small business so I do not have full access to there system.

Below is the screenshot (thanks to your help) of the kit I purchased from CanaKit (for those who are still interested. .

That is fascinating, thank you for sharing an image of your PI it is in an aluminum tin!

Correction to CStanton : The "Wifi " is less then 50ft away from the RP when I have it with me.

I think CStanton helped me figure this out. Thank you.

Actually it seems to ONLY have an aluminum outer band or case, with plastic top and bottom sections. Not exactly as CanaKit describes it on their website product details as I remember. I wouldn't care about that fact either if I could just figure out what this problem with this RP (and the RP forum)

What was the issue, and how did you solve it? I'm keen to know, and others might too if they come across this with the same issue. 

The antenna is right at the side. That means the aluminium is right alongside the antenna. That means it is affecting the antenna, regardless that the top and bottom are plastic. It will seriously affect it.

The antenna is right at the side. That means the aluminium is right alongside the antenna. That means it is affecting the antenna, regardless that the top and bottom are plastic. It will seriously affect it.

I haven't solved the wifi connection issue yet. I was referring to that CStanton helped me solve the "post a screenshot" issue.

• As for your antenna idea, that is a good reason to take the Pi out of the case to see if it helps.  But the last time I attempted to get  the Pi online, I could see my network on the list of available.  I also attempted to test the PW on my laptop to make sure it was good, but couldn't figure out how to log off line completely on Win1 pro ?

I've often looked at the aluminum cases but passed because all I saw was a cool looking Faraday cage.  I guess it's not just my imagination.
I was thinking that the metal case might be good for an EMF noisy industrial environment, but then KalebTheMaker shared Episode 566: How to Automate Welding Positioners with Arduino and that kind of shot that idea down also.

The aluminium cases do visually look great though : )  These Seeed re_computer cases are nice looking, they are anodized alu surround, and I resorted to using the Ethernet connection for the Pi in those. There are round holes ready-plugged up, that are the right size for SMA connectors, so I used that, for the plug-on board on the Pi, which was for the LoRaWAN wireless portion, not WiFi unfortunately.

Another neat thing about these cases is that the top is transparent plastic (so I fitted LEDs inside, to shine on the board). The plan was to make the LEDs blink off and back on whenever there was LoRaWAN activity, but that's something the HAT board doesn't support, so I need to still figure that out.. it should be possible by snooping on a Linux log file perhaps, but I've not started looking into that yet.

Also I soldered up a DC barrel socket to microUSB cable, so that the Pi is more easily powered from a 5V supply. This works great for Pi 3B+. I first tried Pi 4, but the HAT board didn't function with it (despite the manufacturer thinking it did). The Pi 3B+ is better in many ways (more compatible with older hardware drivers, and less difficult to power it up due to lower current requirement, and probably runs cooler, and I didn't need any high-performance for this use-case).