WiFi password complexity

1

Greetings!

I received my PixelBlaze in the mail and am trying to connect it to my WiFi network. Are there any limitations as to what level of password complexity the device will support?

The network I’m trying to connect the PixelBlaze to has a - in the SSID, and the password is 26 characters in length and has two special characters, a : and a )

I temporarily created a second SSID with a simple password, and it connected without issue to the network. However, it does not appear to connect to my main network with the more complex password.

I realize I could change the SSID password, but that would require me to reconfigure over 25 different devices I have on this network!

Thank you :slight_smile:

2

Hi @kavefish,
I don’t know of anything that would prevent a 26 character password from working. The spec allows 8-63 characters. It does have to be a 2.4GHz network though.

All of the WiFi stuff is handled by the framework, I didn’t write that bit, but I’ll take a look and see if anything obvious stands out.

3

Thanks @wizard for the reply. My WiFi antennas broadcast the SSID on both the 2.4 and 5GHz frequencies, so it lets clients choose what frequency it wants to connect to.

In addition, the test SSID I set up with the password without special characters was on the same WiFi AP as the one I had issues with, so I don’t think it is a hardware limitation of my wireless network.

I look forward to see if you find anything that might be causing issues, otherwise I’ll bite the bullet, change the password, and update all of my other IoT devices.

Thanks!!

4

I’ve had trouble with routers/WiFi that have dual band connecting to IoT devices. What I did to solve the connection issue is to have two separate SSID’s: one devoted to 2.4GHz and the other devoted to 5GHz. I’ve read that having dual-band will confuse the IoT device when it’s trying to connect to the 2.4GHz band.

This configuration of two SSIDs also allows me to separate out IoT devices versus my more “trustworthy” devices (hardwired computers, phones, hard-wired SmartTV, etc.). So in case the IoT device is hacked, I can just shut off the 2.4GHz band and still continue to use my internet connection.