WiFi problems with Nerves Livebook on Raspberry Pi Zero 2W

Nerves Forum Nerves Questions / Help
1

Hello everyone! I am new to Nerves, so I tried to do the recommended thing and just start with Livebook. I got myself a Raspberry Pi Zero 2W, downloaded the .fw file for Raspberry Pi 3a and flashed it on my SD card by using the command

sudo NERVES_WIFI_SSID='2.4GHz network name' \
NERVES_WIFI_PASSPHRASE='2.4GHz network password' \
fwup ./nerves_livebook_rpi3a.fw

Plugged the USB power in, the diode started blinking… and blinking… and blinking… and blinking… Parallely I tried to connect to nerves.local… and try to connect… and try to connect… and try to connect… So what am I missing guys?

P.S.: This might turn out to be some sort of an issue between the R-Pi and the WiFi. However, I cannot test this, due to lack of SSH connection. If you have some sort of ideas on this front, I would be happy to hear them as well.

2

I don’t have an answer as I never played with Nerves but I would suggest if you had another Raspberry Pi from a different model to try it and see if you get the same problems or not. I believe you would learn by comparing the process and results.

3

There is some debugging going on in an already closed issue regarding boot and wifi problems with the Pi Zero 2W.

Maybe this is a good starting point.
I remember I also had issues with wifi with a Pi3 the other day but I just plugged in a cable and didn’t debug it any further.

4

I tried this just now with my R Pi Zero 2 W, but I’m also able to connect via USB, to make the initial connection. When I look at the VintageNet.info, it doesn’t show the WiFi configuration passed from the env variables.

Interface wlan0
  Type: VintageNetWiFi
  Present: true
  State: :configured (0:15:37)
  Connection: :disconnected (0:15:38)
  MAC Address: "xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx"
  Configuration:
    %{
      type: VintageNetWiFi,
      vintage_net_wifi: %{networks: []},
      ipv4: %{method: :disabled}
    }

I’m doing this from Windows, but as far as I know, the following should be equivalent:

set NERVES_WIFI_SSID='my_ssid' & set NERVES_WIFI_PASSPHRASE='my_passphrase' & fwup nerves_livebook_rpi3a.fw

Since I can connect via usb0, I’m able to subsequently add the VintageNet configuration on the running device:

iex> VintageNetWiFi.quick_configure("my_access_point", "secret_passphrase")
:ok

and WiFi appears to work once that is done.

I don’t know if this is helpful or not, but it does show that WiFi can be set up with the nerves_livebook firmware on the R Pi Zero 2 W.