I have a v3 board that will not remember it’s WiFi settings after a power cycle (tried multiple times, associates to the same SSID as all the others, and can hit the web interface on the network, but after a power cycle it goes back to broadcasting it’s own Pixelblaze… SSID. Also after setting the WiFi, an SSID with ? + other random/bad characters is being broadcasted for while.
The v3 board is new out of a package today, after soldering on the screw strip.
Hold the button until it goes in to setup mode. This method of putting the device into setup mode will now (since 3.17) also clear the non-volatile memory area where wifi settings are stored and should resolve any data corruption there.
The frameworks and OS store WiFi settings, as well as a few other things in a special section of flash memory in a key-value database. I suspect these issues are caused by data corruption in that database, and I suspect that is what causes both wifi amnesia and random SSIDs.
Tried the hold button down until it goes back to setup/broadcasting it’s own SSID. Same problem, after configuring WiFi connection it does connect, but after power is disconnected and applied it’s back in setup mode.
After applying power to that board I always get the following behavior from the onboard LED…
LED bright, off, LED bright flash 3x, off, LED bright steady
Whereas on other v3 boards that are associating to an AP without issue I see…
LED bright, off, LED dim steady
Measured resistance between GND and BTN on this problem board (thinking maybe the button is mashed internally) I get 1.73m ohm to 2.5m ohm when not pressed, 0.5ohm when pressed … so I don’t think that’s it???
Yes, that 3 quick flash LED sequence at startup means Setup mode. If you press the button, it should cycle through patterns, and if holding it did put it in setup mode, then physically the button is OK.
A snag/bug - holding the button while it’s already in setup mode doesn’t work and won’t clear the nonvolatile memory. It will turn the LED solid on, but no quick flashing. This is a bug 
sorry! To work around it configure it in client or AP mode and then hold the button.
Look for this sequence when entering SETUP mode: Long BLIiIINK, flash+flash+flash, resets, BLINK, flash+flash+flash, pause, solid dim.
Another possible snag, when you connect to a wifi network in setup mode it can take several seconds for it to fully connect, and it will only save the settings once it has successfully connected. After connecting, a few seconds later it will drop its setup AP network. I would wait for the setup network to go away before disconnecting power. If you remove power immediately after configuring it, it might not have saved yet.
Assuming that wasn’t it…
If you put it in AP mode, does that stick? I’m wondering if it’s an interaction with a router. Another thing to try if you have a 2nd PB handy, put the 2nd PB in AP mode and connect the problem one as a client to it. Does it remember wifi if connected to this different network? If it remembers those settings, perhaps switching it back to your wifi might work now that settings for client + AP have been written.
In the other cases where folks reported this I replaced their PB and the new unit worked for them. But when I got the return I could not reproduce the issue here. Putting it into setup mode and connecting it to my wifi worked fine and was remembered.
I know thats a bit of headache to go through, I’m trying to narrow down where the problem might be.
Did any of that trouble shooting work for you? I tried everything listed above, and I’m having the exact same problem as well. Resets every time power is cycled
@jpm ,
Did that work for you? I’m still hopeful that clearning the nonvolatile memory resolves the issue (if a bit awkward to trigger at the moment), and would love to hear if this helps!
For anyone else landing here, I had DMed @Illuminationspecs and got it figured it out - it was a brownout issue caused by a low battery.
I’m out of town for a bit and need to give it another try. I thought I had tried letting it associate, then doing the reset. And I know I tried another SSID, albeit that was being broadcast by the same AP, but it was a unique IP range/DHCP scope. Many variables, so in short I want try try again on another SSID, unique network.
I’m having a similar problem with my bench test Pixelblaze v3 Standard, except all settings are lost after a power cycle. I can connect to the setup mode, but can’t stay connected afterwards for very long before the status changes to “stalled” and then “disconnected”.
I’ve tried completing setup mode, then holding the button to do a full reset. I’ve tried both Client and AP modes, in case it’s a problem with my wi-fi.
After every power cycle, I get the BLINK, flash+flash+flash, pause, solid dim pattern.
It’s connected via USB to my laptop (via a USB hub), and it’s not connected to any LEDs, so it doesn’t seem likely to be a low power problem.
Is it possible that the flash in the ESP32 module is toast?
FYI for anyone else finding this post, after discussing it with @wizard we found free storage space was down to 271K, and config.json was zero bytes.
/list showed some large patterns. I deleted a few, got free space up to ~400K and was able to configure and save. Worked fine after a power cycle.
We think either free space was too low, and/or it had some sort of flash/fs corruption. Either way, it seemed to be crashing trying to save the config.
It’s worth noting that this is my oldest, original Pixelblaze v3 Standard. I’ve been using it almost daily as my bench test setup. I had some giant test patterns with dozens of custom color palettes.
Anyway, it’s working fine now. Thanks for the help @wizard!