Why Did myRIO Disconnect While Streaming Data via WiFi?

Issue Details

When using the myRIO in Access Point mode (i.e. the myRIO is broadcasting its own Wi-Fi network), the connection drops. This happens when I send or receive a large amount of data in a short period of time. Why does this happen, and how can I work around it?

Solution

Occasionally while streaming data in access point mode, the myRIO’s wireless adapter will encounter a fault and need to restart its firmware. When this happens, the connection might resume automatically after a few minutes. The connection could also drop for other reasons common to Wi-Fi, as detailed in question 3 of the NI myRIO Troubleshooting Guide. Wi-Fi communication should be used to monitor the status of an application and retrieve occasional tag data.

There are a few ways to address this:

• Instead of streaming all the data to be logged over Wi-Fi, consider having the myRIO complete most data processing and then only send the results.
• Log data locally, either to the myRIO’s internal storage or by leveraging the USB port to use a flash drive.
• Design your program to detect and handle a network failure, such as by using a watchdog.
• Interact with the myRIO over a USB connection.

Regardless of which way you decide to address this, it’s best practice to make your application more reliable to communications disconnects. A connection could be dropped for any number of reasons, and the wireless adapter resetting would look very similar to any other reason for connection loss. If you make your program restart communications after a failure, it would handle this case and many others.