I'm trying to build a Pi-powered wireless webcam, but I'm running into a problem where, after the Pi has been running for a while, it somehow breaks the wireless network. When this happens, both the Pi as well as any other devices connected to the network become unavailable, and new devices are not able to connect to the network anymore. This only affects the 2.4 GHz network on my dual-band router; the 5 GHz network is unaffected, as are wired devices. A router restart fixes the problem most of the time, but sometimes I also have to unplug the WiFi adapter and then plug it back in.
The setup is as follows:
- Raspberry Pi: Model B and Pi 2 (problem occurs with both)
- Power supply: 2.1 A
- WiFi adapter: this one (Ralink 5370 chipset, connected directly to the Pi, power saving is off)
- Camera: official NoIR camera (activity LED is off)
- Software: motionPie; Raspbian + streamEye (problem occurs with both configurations)
The problem does not seem to occur when the Pi is connected to a wired network, or when nothing is accessing the camera (e.g. just running Raspbian, with a connected ssh session). When connected to WiFi and the camera is in use, however, the problem occurs, sometimes within minutes, sometimes it takes hours.
Neither RPi is overclocked. The WiFi adapter is supposed to be able to run directly from the Pi without a powered hub. The Model B Pi can also run RasPlex using the same WiFi adapter with zero problems. When hooked up to a display and with a user logged in, nothing out of the ordinary shows up on the console.
Any suggestions? I really need to make this work over WiFi.
/var/log/syslog
for clues about anything unusual, but this is really an issue with your router and not the pi or adapter -- even if they are misbehaving in some way, a wifi router should not be overwhelmed by this, and an individual device cannot shut down a network (sans serious cracking). It is sort of like believing that your car is the problem because streetlights go off when you drive by. Could the car be a cause? Sure, but there would have to be something very wrong with the streetlights in order for a normal car to be such an effective cause./var/log/syslog
. Any tips on what to look out for? As for the car and streetlights analogy, I'm not sure it's a very good one, because a car does not interact with streetlights, but a WiFi adapter does with a router. Since the problem doesn't occur with the RPi idling or running Rasplex, for instance, there has to be something about the specific combination of hardware and software that causes this.