Can I ask a stupid question?
I have a two Fire tablets that I use as Dashboards w/Sharptools- a Fire HD8 and a Fire 7. I used them for about ~9 months without any issues before I changed routers and started experiencing an annoying problem:
Both have the annoying problem of disconnecting from the internet intermittently and NOT auto-reconnecting. Ie: if at some point during the day they loose connection, the dashboard is useless from that point until you turn off and turn back on the Tablets' wifi.
I understand that Auto-reconnect is a feature of normal android devices but not Fire OS. This is super annoying as I use the tablets as dashboards for my home security system.... when you trigger your alarm is NOT a good time to have to restart the wifi in order to reload the console.
Both tablets were significantly reconfigured using Fire Toolbox....custom launchers, bloatware removed, etc. I was hoping that there would be a way to install a complete Anroid OS, OR enable auto-reconnect with some sort of setting somewhere?
Does anyone have any advice on how I can get the tablets to auto-reconnect?? Or advice on determining why the tablets keep briefly loosing connection in the first place?
Looks like they are dual band and should chose the strongest signal, but if your router supports designating a bandwidth by SSID you might try setting them up on a single bandwidth (I’d try 2.4ghz first). I’m guessing that something, is causing to attempt to renegotiate the band and they’re getting lost. In a previous home I had a wifi extender that would lose signal everytime my wife ran the microwave.
What is the new router? I'm thinking maybe some of its network optimization functions may be causing the issue with your kindle fires. If @thebearmay's suggestion isn't doable you might also try turning off "band steering," if supported by your router. Though nice to have to ease network congestion and improve overall performance your fires may not respond well to it.
My wifi has split SSIDs (one for 2.4 GHz and a second for 5 GHz). I've had three wall-mounted Fire tablets running 24/7 for years with no issues, outside of occasional reboots when Amazon pushed major updates. Two are running Fully Kiosk Browser, and one is running the Android version of a weather station app that I side-loaded onto the Fire.....
Possible investigation item: There was a discussion yesterday on newer routers, device count limits, and the router automatically dropping devices. Basic summary is that some new routers (i.e., AX) are designed with a limit of X devices. If you exceed that, the router drops some devices based on some internal algorithm. That may be causing your basic problem.
I’m not an expert or anything but I’ve done this in the past. You need root access and an unlocked bootloader. That’s possible to do on devices running older versions of FireOS but I’m not sure it’s possible on more recent ones.
Maybe something half baked with either Wifi 6 or Amazon's wifi implementaion... I just spent two hours fiddling with a freebie 3rd Gen Echo Dot (sitting unopened in a box for a couple of years); I could not get it to connect to my new-ish Asus RT-AX82u wifi 6 router.
Initially I thought the Dot's wifi was completely dead, since its bulit-in 'Amazon-XXX' SSID never showed up when it was in setup mode. But in checking my wifi router's logs, I noticed its MAC address was present; on a hunch I turned off the Asus and enabled the 'IoT' SSID on a Verizon G3100 (an AX tri band router which I need for FiOS TV and normally just use as DHCP server; its 'IoT network' is just a pre-configured SSID for the 2.4G band)....voila, the Dot's 'Amazon' SSID appeared and I was able to configure it.
I tried again to set up the Dot on the Asus router; I disabled its 'dual band SmartConnect' feature and temporarily gave the 2.4Ghz/5Ghz SSID's unique names. Still no go... though now the Dot's SSID appeared in setup mode and connected to my phone, but when it scanned for wifi networks it failed to see either band of the Asus router. I finally found that I could get it to successfully connect to the Asus only when I disabled 'AX' mode on the Asus router.
Weird; it's far from the oldest wifi device I have on my network (I'm only running 34 devices on the Asus) but it's the only one that has shown this incompatibility (if I exclude my Samsung refrigerator; that thing has defied all attempts at connecting to SmartThings-- even SmartThings support gave up on it. Ironically the fridge's SSID was the only one that the Dot initally found during its wifi scan)
Thanks for the advice - the new Router is an ASUS ZenWifi XT8. Previously I'd been using an Eero setup. The ASUS has been better in just about every regard except this issue with these tablets!
Unfortunately I've had the Router's version of Band Steering, which they call 'smart connect' off for most of the last few months and I still seem to have this problem
I wish I could get back to that! My tablets were flawless until I changed routers as well.... this one issue has been the 'fly in the ointment' though.... spoils my impression of an otherwise good router!
It just occurred to me - could the issue be that I use two 5 GHz Bands? I see that at present my divices are spread pretty evenly over 2.4 GHz, and the two 5GHz Bands (5-1 and 5-2).... Both tablets are currently connected to 5-2.
Maybe I should disable one of the two 5 GHz channels?
Another piece of information that may help someone diagnose the problem:
After struggling with this issue annoyingly for a few months (- the tablets seem to take turns disconnecting from the wifi 1-3x each per day), we went away for a week at Christmas... we came home after the week away and both tablets had remained 'online' the whole time that we were gone. I'm not sure if this means something?
See the FAQ's on the 802.11ax/WiFi 6 mode switch. You could try disabling the AX on the 5-2 network and see if that fixes the issue - if indicated by the FAQs. For me (I have older ASUS w/o AX) the settings look good.
Do you have any AX devices on the 5-2 network?
Look at your AI protect settings on your router. These may indicate if there is a protection problem.
Consider testing disabling QOS in Traffic Manager. Normally does not cause problems, but.......
Finally, contact ASUS Support for assistance. Fire tables are fairly wide-spread and they may already have a tech-note solution.
You could always hang an Eero off the Asus in bridge mode and set up a separate wifi network just for your errant Amazon devices. Seems silly but it might get you past your issues.
But I would try disabling 702.11ax first and then "wifi agile multi band" and see what happens.
You could always run a scripting program like Automate for android Automate â‹… Everyday automation for Android â‹… LlamaLab. Its very easy to use with a short learning curve.
If the wifi isn't connected you can automatically reconnect the device.
FLGuy - I installed Automate and tried using a community-created automation for it to reconnect when my Tablet loses Wifi. Unfortunately, thus far it doesn't seem to be working!
Today I'm going to see if I can create my own automation sequence to do the same thing..... resetting the wifi on my tablets 5x a day is getting old!
I registered on this forum because I'm having the same issue. I happen to have an Asus XT8 mesh system and a Fire 10 tablet, running Fully Kiosk. I have a static IP assigned to the tablet; I have it on the roaming block list so it doesn't switch nodes, and I have it blocked from both 5GHz channels so it only connects on 2.4GHz.
Every so often--sometimes once an hour, sometimes after several hours--the tablet screen will go completely white. The only remedy is a reboot. On the tablet, I've disabled a feature called "Automatic Smart Suspend," which apparently shuts off WiFi after some time. That hasn't helped.
There's a statement under my WiFi preferences on the tablet that says, "Wi-Fi doesn't turn back on automatically," but if I tap that, there's no related option to keep WiFi on.
I see this is a relatively recent thread, and I'm piggybacking to see if there's a solution.
I've installed Automate and created a flow to reconnect WiFi if it's disconnected. I really don't know how well it'll play with Fully Kiosk, but I've selected the application to start in the background when FK starts. We'll see if that works.
Thanks for responding User12- I feel like we’re brothers separated at birth, hahaha.
It sounds like we’ve both done all of the same things to attempt to stop this issue. Since the time of my last writing I finally had some luck with automate.
My first attempts all involved disabling and reenabling wifi if the wifi connection was disconnected- that seemed like it would be the simplest option, but I didn’t have any luck. I could run the automation even when the network was already disconnected and nothing would happen.
Eventually I developed a working solution- you can actually find the basic version of it on the Automate community library… I think it’s called “Andrew Wifi Reconnect Attempt 2” . I know this is a bandaid solution, but in 4 months of ripping my hair out with this problem (since I got my XT8) this is the first thing that’s kept my Tablet dashboards running 24/7. It’s based on restarting wifi on the tablet whenever data transmission to/from the tablet drops below a threshold (currently set to 1 )… if anything it probably restarts the wifi a bit more than necessary.
Check it out and let me know if you can improve on my algorithm. Ideally I’d simply it, or even better - resolve the underlying issue (which I’m thinking is something directly inherent with our router/router settings?).
