Raspberry PI device weak connection

[grogsailor]

So I have a raspberry PI connected to my network.  In the home app it shows a weak connection which makes it hard to connect to through a web browser.  The home app also shows it connected to my "Office" wifi point which is on the other side of the house from the PI.  I placed a nest wifi point literally about 5 feet from the pi but it doesn't seem to want to connect to it.  I've tried restarting the network and restarting the pi, but it constantly reconnects to Office wifi point, Is there a way to force it to connect to my wifi point vice my office?

[MichaelP]

Hello @grogsailor 

WiFi devices make their own decisions about which access point to connect to. It should do a signal-quality measurement on startup and then select the option that provides the best signal. Only one of my Raspberry Pi units is on WiFi, and it seems to connect to the nearest access point, so I'm not sure what might be going on in your case. Is it connecting on 2.4GHz or 5GHz? Is it possible there is a source of interference that might be impacting the signal quality measurement? Is your Raspberry Pi set up for the correct region? In mine, for example, the /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf specifies "US" as the region. This can impact which 5GHz channels it might look for (mostly applicable for devices that support 5GHz).

[grogsailor]

It is connecting now on 5ghz to the wifi point closer to the PI, after I repeatedly turned off and on the PI.  The PI is about 10 ft from the router and so I can't imagine any interferences.  I also double-checked I am set up for the US region on the PI.  So ... working for now, but I guess there is no way to "force" it to a specific access point if it starts connecting to the wrong access point, huh?

[MichaelP]

Glad to hear it's working as expected at the moment. Interference can happen at short ranges, especially in the 5GHz band, when a device in that area is using the same spectrum. We see this a lot with things like sound bars that transmit digital audio to support things like wireless subwoofers and/or surround speakers. If you have something like that nearby, it might cause issues when it's on.

It may be possible to "force" the Raspberry Pi to a specific BSSID by using a "bssid" directive in the wpa_supplicant.conf config file. If it's connected to the one you want right now, you should be able to see what the BSSID is using the iwconfig command and put that in the wpa_supplicant.conf file. Point being, the device still has to be the one making the decision. By hardcoding this, you're stopping it from doing a signal-quality scan to make that decision.

[Jhonleanmel]

Hey everyone, 
 

@MichaelP, we appreciate the help.
@grogsailor, awesome — glad to hear that your issue is fixed. It looks like we can consider this one complete, so I will lock the thread shortly unless I can help out with anything else. 

Best, 
Mel

[Jhonleanmel]

Hi folks,

As we got our resolution here, I'm going to mark this thread as resolved. I'll be locking this thread if we won't hear back from you in 24 hrs. Should that happen, feel free to create a new one if you have more questions or have other concerns in the future.

Cheers,
Mel