Newbie question on connecting my FPP to my wifi extender....please help

[oversear]

[Poporacer]

Ok, so you have a few issues going on here. 
You actually have 2 networks in your home with the way it is configured. Networks, by design, will isolate traffic to only their respective network so devices on one network cannot normally communicate with devices on another network. This is for security reasons or else your neighbor could access your devices from his home.

Based on your video and statements you have:
Home Network 10.0.0.x
Extender network 192.168.10.x

It looks like you have your FPP hardwired to your Home network and also trying to connect wirelessly to the same network. This isn't a recommended method as it might not work as expected if you don't understand networking metrics (Advanced topic)

Your computer is connected to your home network

Because you have your FPP hardwired to your home network and your computer connected to your home network, you can always reach it at a 10.0.0.x IP address because they are in the same network.

When you configure your wlan0 to connect to the Oversear 2.4ghz network, you are connecting to your Home Network so the Wi-Fi IP address will be in the home network range, 10.0.0.x and when you try to connect to the 10.0.0.246 address your computer is on 10.0.0.x so they can "talk" to each other.

When you change to the SSID to  Oversear 2.4ghz_Ext SSID, you will get a 192.168.1.x IP address because your extender network is configured to be a separate network and when you try to connect to the 192.168.10.61 address from your Computer (10.0.0.x IP address) they cannot talk because they are on different networks (one is 10.0.0.x and one in 192.168.10.x this is by design) But you can reach it at the 10.0.0.245 address because it is "talking" through the eth0 interface.

The reason your phone can connect to the 192.168.10.61 address is that it is probably connecting to the  Oversear 2.4ghz_Ext SSID so they are on the same network.

There are a few solutions to this. The easiest would be to configure your extender as either Repeater Mode or Bridge Mode, but that would depend on your particular extender make and model to see how it should be configured.

You mentioned something about the 10.0.0.x network as being private so you started making changes in your router? ALL home network IP addresses are Private (10.0.0.x, 192.168.1.x, 192.168.10.x and MANY more) You need to be careful in changing things that you are not 100% certain of what they are for, or you can end up making your network or devices unusable! (You mentioned something about setting the gateway somewhere to 192.168.1.1? That could be problematic as well depending on where you changed it!)

I also see that you are using a Pi5. The Pi5 is a powerhouse but there a few things to consider, it takes a TON of power. Make sure you are using an adequate power supply, I suggest using the official Pi5 power supply.
It also runs HOT and if it gets too hot, it will begin to throttle (turn off) different services. You might need to add a fan (or fans) to keep it cool enough to run properly.

[oversear]

Thank You that's super helpful .....I managed to do what you said with the wifi extender by accident before I read this and it worked. I thought originally I had set it up as a repeater so I'm not sure what ai did to make it it's own network but that would explain alot....

Thanks again for your very detailed response👌
I run this for projection shows so it's good to know that the pi runs hot. I bought the kit that came with everything so hopefully the fan works to keep it going. I have a pi 4 as well for backup but it's the one that's encased in a keyboard and kind of bulky for my projection enclosure.

[Poporacer]

I run this for projection shows so it's good to know that the pi runs hot.

Just a FYI, you really won't get any performance gain in using the Pi 5 over the Pi 4 (and depending on usage even a Pi 3B+)

[JonD]

Just a FYI, you really won't get any performance gain in using the Pi 5 over the Pi 4 (and depending on usage even a Pi 3B+)

I thought I remembered @dkulp imply once that the Pi3B+ and Pi4 did not fully support 40FPS?  Does that mean the Pi5 doesn't fully support 40FPS either?

https://falconchristmas.com/forum/index.php?topic=16857.msg134938#msg134938

[dkulp]

Huh?    All the Pi's should be able to handle 20fps and 40fps just fine.

[JonD]

Huh?    All the Pi's should be able to handle 20fps and 40fps just fine.

The original message was linked above.  Someone suggested the Pis would not do 40fps in multi-sync, I had posted I thought they should, and then Darylc and you posted there were some performance issues with reading the SD card.

There clearly is some information out there suggesting FPP cannot handle 40fps in some circumstances.  Just trying to get my head around when that is.  Where does the SD card performance issue come into play... if at all? 

[darylc]

@JonD The thread you linked was about Falcon v4/v5 running as remotes via an SD card.  My comment was related to that, it had nothing to do with FPP controllers in general.

[JonD]

Maybe that is where I had got lost.  I suggested the standalone option was not ideal and threw out installing a Pi in the controller box.  I probably moved on to the Pi and others were still talking about the Falcon.

So what I am hearing is that FPP BB and PI should fully support 40FPS, but some controllers when placed in remote mode may not be able to handle 40FPS.  The tiny cpu and SD card read latency on some controllers may cause them to drop packets?

[dkulp]

The various Non-Pi/BBB remotes (Falcons, Genius, ESPixelStick, etc...) may have various hard limitations.  Those limitations could be due to a variety of reasons.    It could be the CPU speed on the embedded processor.  It could be the way the SD card is wired limiting the amount of data that can be read off.  It could be amount of memory on the device.  (The latter is the reason the F16v4/5 only does zlib, not zstd.  zstd needs larger memory look up tables to decompress).  Theres a bunch of reasons.    But in pretty much every case, the limitation can be "removed" by sticking a Pi in front of the device to act as the remote and leaving the controller in "bridge" mode.

The Pi's and Beagles certainly have limitations as well, but they are way beyond what any of the various standalone controllers support.  As mentioned in that thread, the SD card on the Pi's and Beagles are not super fast (compared to the SD card slot in a modern computer).  However, using the zstd and sparse FSEQ files almost always keeps the size well below those limits.    The single core on the older Pi's and Beagles certainly limits things, but it's fast enough to handle any of the capes/hats that are put on it (exceptions being the K128 and the Octo's).  In general, those limits have nothing to do with the frame rate though.  Once you get to 40fps, if you haven't hit those limits, you are fine.    Going from 40fps -> 100fps, for example, means the strings lengths have to be much lower.  Thus, the amount of data per frame is much lower. 

Anyway, the Pi and Beagle based controllers (and the Pi/Beagles's in general) will work fine with pretty much any framerate.    I've tested from 20fps up to 120fps for various configurations. 

Can a single Pi3B+ handle playing a 4million channel show at 40fps all via e1.31?  Likely not.  It could hit the SD card speed limit(likely in complex areas of the sequence).  Could hit the network limit (probably, Pi3B+ ethernet is via USB2 which the soundblaster would share).  Etc...  However, the nice thing about FPP is you can add additional remotes and split up the heavy loads to keep what each Pi needs to handle to a reasonable load and eliminate the pressure points.

[JonD]

Thanks for clarifying Daniel.  That makes perfect sense.  The controller issues make sense to me.  I was having a hard time getting my head around why FPP could not handle 40FPS, and it turns out I just need to get a new pair of glasses!   Thanks!