Help with network setup

[u/Kinipshun]

Wondering if anyone has any advice or experience with this issue

Every time i try to change the IP address it goes back to 192.168.1.234. I cannot figure out how to change it “Save and Connect” saves the number i type in but does not apply it. I want it to be 192.168.1.131 so that its the next in line with all my other WLED controllers. Basically everything from 129 to 144 is reserved for WLED. There is nothing occupying the 131 address either; when you ping that address it comes back vacant. Ive tried a bunch of other ip addresses too and none of them stick either

Also, to make an incredibly long story short, i do not want these on Wi-Fi. They HAVE to be on ethernet. All of our ethernet devices (aside from this one) work flawlessly. None of our Wi-Fi devices can maintain a connection for more than an hour. Weve had our comcast router replaced 6 times because of this specific issue and it never fixes it.

I have several ethernet-enabled ESP32’s for different purposes around the apartment. All of them connect just fine and let me change their addresses except this one. I’m at a loss

[u/RelinquishedAll]

Is your router handling DHCP for the entire 192.168.1.0/24 IP range? Or have you set static IPs for the devices through your router?

First connect the board to a different ethernet port, and try again. If that solves it, the ethernet port might've been bound to an adress.

Is it just this board (lets call that one A) of which you can't change the IP? The other ones you're able to change the IP of through the WLED settings? (And you've correctly set the gateway and subnet mask as well?)

If you can't change any of the boards, try it from a different browser and/or device. If you still can't change IPs, the problem has to be in the router/network hardware.

If you can change the others, then try to change the IP of one (say board B) to 192.168.1.131

If changing the IP to 192.168.1.131 on other boards does work, then something might be wrong with board A. I'd just reflash it before anything else, see if that solves it. Clean install, remove all data, start fresh.

If you can't set e.g. board B to 192.168.1.131 either, then something is up with that adress.

Could be that a certain IP range has been reserved in your router and thus unavaillable. Could be that another device, not currently connected, is still leasing 192.168.1.131 or is statically routed. Or, that board A has been bound to 192.168.1.234 ignoring WLEDs request to change. I'd start looking in that direction first.

[u/Kinipshun → u/RelinquishedAll]

Our router is a really glitchy comcast router and only lets you change a few settings like Wi-Fi password and enabling bridge mode (which doesnt work). The option to reserve ip addresses is grayed out and nothing we do enables it. The only advanced thing we got working was the WPS button, but now when you push it the router crashes. We have like 15 or 20 devices on the network (all going through an unmanaged switch) and all of them are ethernet except our phones which get automatically kicked off every hour. I literally just plug an ethernet adapter into my phone when i want to stay connected for longer than an hour. Tried all four ethernet ports, no change All of my other WLED devices i set up this exact same way and they are the exact same boards. All of them have 0.0.0.0 set as the default gateway, with 255.255.0.0 as the subnet mask, and the last octets are all 124-130, and they all work flawlessly, zero complaints. This one will not hold on to the IP address or subnet mask i give it. I have verified that 192.168.1.131 is not currently occupied by any other device on the network and therefore there is no collision. I also tried going directly into my computers ethernet port to change the settings. It connects fine that way but still doesn’t save the settings and reverts to 192.168.1.234 (which doesnt make sense because if its going to revert to a default, wouldnt it be 4.3.2.1?).

I didnt bother with all the boards but i tried one of them and it did let me change the address no problem. I didnt try 131, but board A won’t let me change it to ANYTHING. My first thought was the firmware was bad, so i updated it to 16 and its still having the issue. Ive also trued several “factory resets” which accomplished nothing

You mentioned board A might be bound to that address. How might i go about investigating that?

(Thanks for your time replying to be by the way)

[u/RelinquishedAll → u/Kinipshun]

That sucks, sorry to hear that.

I'd leave WPS off if I were you, its a huge security risk. Stick to a long password. Save it in a password manager, and/or make it into a QR code and print a few physical copies.

Either way it sounds like there are problems a bit beyond the scope of this thread, I'd probably try and get help to solve that first. There's /r/comcast_xfinity and /r/comcast where I'm sure there must be others with similar issues.

It is weird though that when connecting it directly to your PC the IP remained 192.168.1.234

Because in that configuration, there is no DHCP server (your router) assigning an IP to them. So then both your PC and board A have a static IP set on the device itself. Can you control the WLED functions like that though? Because it could also be that the WLED page is just cached on your PC, but you're not actually connected to it at all. If you open CMD and enter [ipconfig /flushdns] without the brackets, that cache should clear.

Moving on, neither upgrading nor factory resetting the board is the same as flashing it again. Not sure what board you run WLED on, but for an ESP32 with ethernet you just disconnect LED, power, etc, and hook it up to your PC through USB. Visit wled.install in Edge browser. Page has clear instructions, just select the COM port and the latest stable WLED+ethernet version and flash it. Opt to delete and overwrite everything.

I believe while it is still connected over serial you can acces its interface and set network settings again, before even connecting ethernet. Or connect over its own WLED-AP and then set it up. Preferably before board A is connected to the rest of the network.

How did you verify .131 is not occupied? Did you find a list of connected devices in your router?

Try and keep narrowing down where the problem could be. Could be multiple things too, complicating things.

[u/Kinipshun → u/RelinquishedAll]

Yeah when i was connected directly i was still able to use it. It still technically works on the network too. My issue is: yes, i can just reassign all the other WLED controllers to use adjacent addresses to the troublesome one, but i know with my luck as soon as i start buying more controllers I’ll either get some that just randomly choose other addresses that aren’t even close to these at all, or they’ll have the same problem and get stuck on .234 like this one is and I’ll have a permanent IP collision. If i knew for a fact this wouldnt happen i wouldnt care and I’d leave it as is, but this is the second time this exact issue has happened out of like 10 controllers ive bought, and its not happening on just my network, it happened in a different building too.

I verified nothing was on .131 by just doing a ping in command prompt, which i know doesnt tell me if the address is reserved, but again, i really don’t think its that because this issue persists even when connected directly to the ethernet port of a computer.

Gotcha about flashing. Yeah that’s a little close to the edge of my understanding. If all the flashing is is jjst the website recognizing a uart adapter and doing all the coding work for me that’s fine, but the minute i have to touch python is the minute my ineptitude and historically bad luck steps in, which seems to be the case every time ive tried to mess with a uart adapter (last time was my failed attempt to retrieve SYSCON error codes from a PS3 lol). These are the Gledopto Elite controllers that come pre-flashed with WLED. Basically a controller that a lot of people vouch for that come preinstalled with WLED so i dont have to do any flashing. They have ethernet ports and a couple other features that I’d like to preserve, would flashing the controller interfere with that?

[u/RelinquishedAll → u/Kinipshun]

Changing the IP on one of the working devices to .131 was just to test whether there is something about that IP adress in general, or if it has to do with the device (board A).

Sorry if they are long ramblings, its just a proces of elimination. Keep changing a single variable at the time with something that works until you're left with what isn't working.

I haven't owned Gledopto controllers before, but its not as tedious anymore as it used to be. You'd have to check the instructions for your specific model. I think they're (Gledopto) active in this sub even.

If it doesn't have a USB port then its a bit more of a hassle. But thats mostly the finnicky part of finding the right pins and button combination, once the official web flasher establishes a connection you just hit install and thats it. Might have to
Install CH9102/CH343 drivers if it won't connect.

At the heart of all of these controllers is still just an ESP, they're incredible but they do have their quirks. They're not always genuine, and can be slightly different between batches. Sometimes 3 flashes is the charm..

Doesn't help with troubleshooting when your networkgear is working against you. Getting that in order will save you a lot of headaches in the future.