I'm having trouble with the WiFi on my new C8 hub. When I try to connect via WiFi, the hub doesn't seem to see any SSIDs (there should be several visible from its location). When I manually enter the SSID/password, it just spins and is unable to connect. In about 10 or so attempts, I've got it connected twice. However, by the next day it had lost the connection and I was getting the red/green light flash on the hub. Then I tried connecting to the MyNewHubitat SSID from my phone, but it wasn't broadcasting it. From there, I did a reset with the button underneath. When it came back up, it was broadcasting MyNewHubitat, so I tried connecting and re-entering the WiFi info. But halfway into entering the information, my connection to MyNewHubitat dropped and then it was no longer broadcasting the network. It just seems like 90% of the time, the hub has no WiFi capability (can't see broadcast SSIDs, can't connect, and now can't even broadcast it's own network for setup).
The hub works fine on ethernet, but I was really hoping to get it on WiFi so I could lose the wireless bridge I'm currently using. This really seems like it might be a hardware problem with the WiFi on the hub, but does anyone have any ideas?
Can you describe a bit more about where / how you are attempting to do the steps you describe at the beginning of your post? Are you trying to do this through the web UI in a browser on a PC / laptop? Or something else...? For the device you are using, how is it connected to the network? Using an ethernet cable, Wi-Fi, etc.
This may not be relevant, but what operating system are you running on your phone? Android or iOS?
On your router, have you reserved and IP address for the MAC of the Wireless adaptor in the HE hub? This would be a different MAC compared to the ethernet adaptor.
My suspicion with your phone dropping the connection to MyNewHubitat is that the phone is deciding to switch back to a wireless network that has an Internet connection, but can't be sure if that is the case or not.
I noticed these comments in the Getting Started section indicating that the Wi-Fi will be disabled when an ethernet cable is plugged in. Are you attempting to use Wi-Fi with the cable plugged in?
Hi, I have primarily attempted these steps from a PC (Firefox browser) that I usually use to maintain the Hubitat. The hub is connected to ethernet, and I am attempting (unsuccessfully) to connect the WiFi on the Network Setup settings page.
When I talked about MyNewHubitat, that was a separate scenario that I only tried once. In that case, the hub was disconnected from ethernet and was supposed to be connected via WiFi, but the hub had lost its connection overnight. In that case I was connecting via my iPhone. Your point about my phone switching to a new network with internet access makes a lot of sense and might be the reason that I dropped the connection that time. But it doesn't explain why I'm not able to make a WiFi connection while using the main interface and connected via ethernet.
While writing this I tried to connect again (via browser on PC while ethernet was connected) and it worked again this time (3rd success with 10+ failures). I guess I can leave it connected to both WiFi and ethernet and then periodically check back to see if the WiFi stays connected. Any suggestions on the best way to troubleshoot this?
My understanding is that you do not want both wireless and wired enabled at the same time. Turn off the wireless and just use wired. It is much more stable.
@pcallis is still using wireless effectively, needing to currently connect the HE to a wireless bridge until the Wi-Fi can be setup on the HE hub.
This may be part of your problem. The documentation I linked earlier mentioned that if you have an Ethernet cable plugged into the HE hub it will disable Wi-Fi on the HE hub.
My interpretation of that section of the documentation was that the hub won't broadcast the MyNewHubitat network while ethernet is connected. I didn't read it as turning off the hub's ability to connect to WiFi itself. But maybe it's worth a shot to start from the beginning: No network connection and use the MyNewHubitat approach to setting up a network instead of trying to use the Network Settings page.
Rebooted the hub from the web interface and yanked the ethernet before it started rebooting. For future record, this doesn't work. If the hub loses network this way, it apparently doesn't turn on the MyNewHubitat network when it reboots, so there's no way to input WiFi info.
At that point I was forced to use the network reset button on the bottom of the hub, which apparently the right way to do it. When it booted up this time, the MyNewHubitat network was available.
I used my iPhone to enter my network info into the hub. My phone dropped the connection about 3 times while I was trying to do this. No idea why this is happening, but on the 4th try I was able to get everything entered quickly enough and I clicked connect.
The light on the hub immediately went green. This is way faster than anything I saw when trying to enter network info on the Network Setup page in the main UI. Every time I tried it there it would hang for a good 60+ seconds before giving any feedback.
I tried the web interface and it worked! I was just curious, so I looked at the Network Setup page. But it said that the hub's IP address was on the 169.254 network, which Google tells me means that the hub couldn't get a real LAN IP from my DHCP. I have my DHCP configured to give the hub a fixed IP so I can always find it, which I suppose is why I could connect even though the hub doesn't know it's own IP. So then I tried just doing a regular reboot from the web UI.
After a reboot, the hub seems to know its own address and correctly identifies that it came from DHCP. Everything is working right now. Hopefully since I used the MyNewHubitat to configure the WiFi this time, it will be persistent and hold the connection.
I'll let it be for now and update here on whether this approach worked for the long term.
Well, not a good update. I woke up this morning to a totally unresponsive hub. Green light was still on, but it was not on the network, wasn't performing automations, just totally frozen. In years of running my C5 and several weeks with the C8 on ethernet, I don't think I've ever seen it do that. Everything about when I try to use the built-in WiFi on this C8 just seems... sketchy. Could this be a hardware problem? Any other suggestions for ways to rule out other problems first? Thanks everyone.
In the meantime I've switched back to ethernet via a wireless bridge.
