Solution for bad wifi?

Does anyone have a solution for the crappy wifi in the P1S? I have 5 P1S and 3 P1P, all in the same room, and the wifi router is also in the same room. One of the P1S machines constantly loses the wifi connection, another machine loses connection about once a month.

Why bambu doesn’t include an ethernet port is beyond me.

It’s a mystery to a lot of us. I feel your pain. Bambu clearly wants to show its customer base who’s boss. They don’t feel we need Ethernet so therefore they ignore customer pleas for it. Besides, who are we to question their wisdom? :wink:

However, one trick you might try is to embed the SSID and Password into a file named “user_wifi.cfg” on the SD Card.

Here’s the instructions on how to do that.

All that will do is self-connect on power cycle. I do not know if it will make the connection more robust but it’s the only tool Bambu feels we should aloud to have.

Normally one would suggest to look in the connectivity logs. Oh… wait… they’re encrypted because Bambu feels we don’t need to see what’s happening in our own hardware. And besides, they keep telling us that there is nothing in those logs that is useful. We wouldn’t understand it anyway so I guess they’re right.

Of course the normal process with any network attached device would be to establish a static IP address… oh… wait… we’re not allowed to do that either. Oh well… I guess we’ll just have to feed from the trough what the farmer is feeding the sheep and not ask questions.

It is a combo of a dirt cheap antenna and a cheap all in one solution for the communication stuff.
In theory you can replace the original antenna with a high gain or directional antenna.
Not a recommended procedure though.

Ever considered getting a WiFi enabled SD card?
Far from ideal but makes getting print files to the machine easy and deleting old files a breeze.
Control of the machine and that in a reliable fashion is the main issue here.
I tried a bunch of USB dongles for Wifi and Ethernet but no luck, the mainboard and firmware refuse to even acknowledge them.
Only one at least caused a reaction and got powered up but there was no option to switch the wifi onto the dongle anywhere.
Bambu does have at least one industrial printer in their program supporting Ethernet and there they claim it is to ensure the security of projects and such for the owner.

The only half working solution for multiple machines on the same router goes like this:
Manually assign IP addresses to all machines.
If possible split them to 2G and 5G Wifi or if one performs worse stick to the other.
Make sure to avoid introduced interference!
Great to have this basement, little warehouse or dedicated shed for your little print farm…
Not so great if it means the Wifi signal gets reflects off the metal walls. roof or other things, similar story for those power boards and other machines that might be running.
Despite all claims of being fully certified many inverter based systems, like your aircon, microwave and such and not properly shielded.
They are for the most vital parts but not for the signal generating electronics and their EMF is often more than enough to make a mess out of the Wifi.
No, none of that will help much with the bad Wifi implementation in our machines, but they should be considered.

It was attempted to use custom firmware a few times, same for hook up and in-line boards to enable things like Ethernet.
But so far Bambu always fixed all loopholes and exploits used as soon as such projects became public knowledge.
The best hint to get a better connection running multiple machines would be to make sure they are not lines up too close as then one machine blocks the other in terms of signal stuff.
Made worse if lined up along a concrete wall, starting from a corner…
And well, if all fails right when you heat a snack in the microwave or the wife starts the washing machine you know what to blame…

Thanks I’ll give that a try.

My router allows the creation of a dedicated IoT network, so I created that separate network just for this particular printer. My thinking was that if it’s on it’s own network perhaps that will help. I think it might have helped some but it still happens way too often. The issue seems to be machine specific. I’ve rearranged the printers to see if it was the location or printer that dropped the signal. The problem followed the printer.