I see the same, I expect this to be fixed in a future update.
Now I know the work around it is indeed nothing more than minor inconvenience.
cheers
Have you opened it just to inspect the wifi card and see if the antennae connectors aren’t on or fully seated or something?
… which is made of? thickness?
Whose AP is the one with name starting “[range]”?
I assume that yours is the one with name NETGEAR40.
So just to confirm … in a three level property you have the AP in the middle level?
Hi @irvinewade, 3 floors, plywood with laminate.
The others are “smart devices” a TV and a range, yes.
The WAP is on the ceiling of the bottom floor. Yes I understand that it could be better placed, however that is a major task that will require I separate the router/switch/WAP unit out for a router/switch with a discrete WAP on the second floor. All because the L5 is not working properly. I have a fair to middling understanding of WiFi having deployed it in apartment blocks in the past. I am reluctant to blame the WiFi setup, even though it can be improved, because the behaviour is not specific to this set up, see the same for any wireless I try and connect to.
I really appreciate the willingness to help, but I am very firmly of the belief that this is the device, not the WiFi setup because the behaviour is not limited to his network, and it is limited to this one device.
Even without testing the signal strength the simple fact that every other WiFi capable device in the house has full coverage implies the issue is not the WIFi set up but the device itself.
Am I missing something there?
your thoughts appreciated.
No! I had not thought to do that. Great suggestion!
Wouldn’t that be nice if I could just reseat a connection or something…
What I can see looks good. The connections seem solid, well seated. I see no change in the behaviour unfortunately.
I am really scratching my head over this.
So you need to be measuring the signal strength (dBm) as seen by the Librem 5. Is that what the posted graphs are from or something else?
I just went for a wander. I can comfortably maintain reliable ping (0% loss) from the Librem 5 with a reported signal strength of -80 dBm. By about -100 dBm it is highly unreliable (signal too weak, losing association). Standing outside the house maybe 15 metres away from the house, with the nearest AP inside the house, I have viable ping. (FWIW, I have exclusively discrete WAPs, the WAP built in to the router is disabled and not in use and, yes, this is an expensive way of doing things. But then I also have to note that I have the older, less good WiFi card in my Librem 5.)
It appears that you have no wireless security on your TV. Just saying … 
You may want to try swapping the antennas. Be careful though, the connectors are very brittle.
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Maybe I will have to bite the bullet and improve the WiFi at home, but that still leaves me with being unable to use the L5 at the office.
I am convinced this is the L5.
That was a WiFi scanner app on the S9+ What are you using to get the signal strength as received by the L5? I would like to compare the L5 and S9 at a number of locations and see if they are registering different signal strengths.
Oops! 
Thanks, I missed that!
Thanks for the suggestion, do you mean put the left wire on the right terminal and right hand wire on the left terminal?
Yes, swap them around.
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Command given above:
You can use
sudo iw dev wlan0 scan | grep ...to see what SSIDs your phone is receiving on what frequencies and what the signal strength is and much more besides (depending on what yougrepfor).
You will definitely need to filter that output as it produces much more than you will need or want.
As I am unsure on what your level of Linux expertise is, let me know if you need more clues on that command.
As a cute, maybe more user-friendly alternative, you can also use:
nmcli -f "CHAN,BARS,SIGNAL,SSID" d wifi list ifname wlan0
Be careful though because I think the two commands express the signal strength in different ways. The first command gives you can actual dBm value (will nearly always be negative and a less negative number is better). The second command gives you more like the traditional signal strength indicator on a mobile phone (more bars is better / higher number is better).
Yes, both the absolute number and a comparison would be useful.
Which level of the house has the front door? I am wondering whether you can wander out the front door from the level where the router is - to test the horizontal range.
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Well I am consistently getting lowe signal strength on the L5 across the board when compared to the S9+
Run # S9+ L5
1 -40 -82
2 -35 -79
3 -35 -90
5 -50 -100
6 -62 -67
7 -40 -77
It certainly looks to me like the L5 is “seeing” a much much lower signal.
This is at the office with Ubiquity WAP. Here I get more like 30 feet before dropping the signal, but I still see a massive difference between the two.
Similarly the Celular connection is much much weaker than the S9 and it keeps dropping an IP even though it reports a data connection, so I can’t even fall back on wireless data.
I am really hoping I can get this sorted as it makes the phone almost unusable.
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So are the different runs from moving around or just multiple measurements in the same spot?
I wouldn’t bother to do the testing in at your office. Neither the WAP nor the building is the same.
It was moving around.
Testing with any WiFi is valid as far as I am concerned. We are not testing the WiFi. The WIfI is fine with every other device I have tested. We are testing the L5 on multiple different known functional WiFi networks.
I am about ready to send this brick back. I cannot use it. The Celular data is not working, I get no IP despite the settings reporting I have a data connection. It worked for about 5 minutes one day and since then nothing.
The WifI is absolutely useless. My frustration has peaked. I should not have to spend weeks trying to do what should be done at the factory.
One thing I noticed is that if I sit in my kitchen (where I am happily connected with an S9, an HP laptop AND a tablet) the signal reported varies enormously. I will even see full “bars” in the UI for a few seconds then it drops off to nothing. It’s like its oscillation at a very low frequency, strong weak over minutes. It’s not like anything I have seen before.
I also noticed that iw and nmcli show totaly different signal strengths. That to me suggests the issue may be driver/software because nmcli shows strong signal where iw does not. I will post the differences when the phone is charged again.
@irvinewade - I greatly appreciate your efforts, I do want to get this going but at this point I feel the need to make a warranty claim. The hardware does not work as it should. Of this I am 100% convinced.
It may be possible to fix things via software, though I am loosing faith.
I am not a total neophyte, I have been using Linux since 1997, I administer a rack of Dell servers running Ubuntu, and I am a M$ certified System Administrator. Yet I am absolutely at a loss to get this device to do even the most basic tasks.
Just trying to write this report is an exercise in frustration.
-
I cannot for the life of me figure out how to copy text from the terminal to paste anywhere. All I get is a “select all” option. No way to do anything with the current selection.
-
I output to file to put it on my laptop so I can actually copy/paste the text but the file manager has doesn’t work. Long press brings up a context menu that cannot be used as the moment I release my finger it disappears. OK - I can move it using the command line but I cannot find a “tab” key on the keyboards. Who uses the terminal without tab complete? Without a tab key the terminal is very frustrating.
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I thought I might take a screen shot to post. Can’t figure out how to do that.
I love the concept of convergence. I wanted to get a lapdock instead of replacing this laptop because O really am happy to have a Linux desktop, have done for 25 years. The usability issues I am finding so very very frustrating could be overlooked if I had any kind of reliable network connectivity, but sadly I don’t.
So now I have this device that doesn’t connect to anything, and is a great frustration to use. I am not the kind of fellow who gives up easily, but I have a life, 6 kids, a full time job as a sysadmin, and I need the simple basic functions to work.
They don’t, and I am very very disappointed that I have wasted money I really didn’t have on a paper weight.
@irvinewade and others I appreciate your efforts to help, it’s not getting me anywhere and I am about to throw this chunk of frustration in the lake.
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For now the workaround is to use the terminal keyboard–>" >_ key"–> menu
sudo apt install gnome-screenshot
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Thank you John,
cooler heads prevail.
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Have you tried swapping the antennas as I asked earlier?
Currently I’m using a SparkLAN card with just a single antenna connected (because I was too lazy to re-route the other one while replacing my old Redpine card 
) and I’m getting pretty much the same dBm readings as on my Dell XPS 13 laptop for 2.4GHz networks (differences within 1-2 dBm) and about 20 dBm worse readings for 5GHz (which I’m pretty sure can be attributed to a missing antenna). Both bands remain usable across my house. Your values show much more extreme differences, which would point to some antenna issues. You should also check the antenna cable connections on both ends (especially whether connectors aren’t damaged).
Not necessary anymore, taking screenshots is possible from the power button long press menu.
Thanks DOS,
I am back into this after putting is aside for the weekend. I will have a go at the antenna, I think you might be on the right track there as I DID see a slight improvement simply disconnecting and reconnecting them.
One thing though, there is not sufficient slack in the antenna cable when I simply take the small cover off. If I open it right up, can I expect enough slack to swap them and will it impact my warranty?
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