SML reader not connecting anymore to WIFI with Fritzbox 7590 version 7.59 or 7590AX 8.00 / 8.01

[Slyfuchs]

Thanks for this great project and the work you put in.
However lately (starting from the 3rd of September 2024, what my data are telling me) I ran into an issue ...... which took me almost 2 days to analyze and confirm so far.

My SML reader was running well over a year. Suddenly it seamed to stop.

Analyzing the issue I think ( but I'm still not 100% sure) it was an update of the Fritzbox 7590 to version 7.59 (or even one version before but I become not aware immediately that the SMLreader did not provide data anymore ).

I'm using a long WiFi password with more than 32 Bytes and I first thought this might be the issue.
(The long (>32Bytes) password anyhow worked the complete year before with the SMLreader without any issue.)

But with an older Fritzbox 7360, I had lying around with an version 6.88 it I could confirm that I could log on with the long WiFi password, also with the latest version of SMLreader 2.3.0. (I have updated the SMLreader software after I detected the connection issue in the hope it would resolve the issue, which it did not. Unfortunately I did not note down which version of SMLreader I was running before ....

What is interesting is that my ESPHome devices, that don't use IoTWebConf, are still connected to the WiFi with the new Fritzbox version 7.59. - So my suspicion is it has something to do with IoTWebConf.
Haven't looked into the differences with wireshark though.....

The issue is that the SMLreader tries to connect to the WiFi (unsuccessful) as can be seen in the debug output (timeout), however the Fritzbox does not even report an attempt in its logs that a device tried to connect.....

Or did I just overlook a new security feature in the new Fritzbox version?
Or hopefully this is fixed from Fritzbox side with the upcoming 8.00 version? I'll keep you posted.

Sylvester

[mruettgers]

Hi Sylvester,

Unfortunately, I don’t have a Fritzbox here to replicate the issue. Which 2.4 GHz channel is the affected Wi-Fi network using? I know I’ve had problems with ESPs on channels 12-14 in the past. Maybe the Fritzbox switched the channel?

Michael