[OnDeBanks]

Hi All,
I'm a beginner so any help would be appreciated. I bought a Pi model B and a WiPi WiFi dongle. I installed RaspBMC using Noobs and connected the WiPi and it worked fine. I could connect to my home WiFi and use XBMC remote on my Android phone as a remote control. I then connected an external hard drive (Samsung M3 1TB USB 3.0 Hard Drive). It worked ok. I could view video files on the USB drive on XBMC using the phone as a remote.

The next time I powered up the Pi the WiFi didn't work. The blue LED on the WiPi goes out halfway through the boot process and obviously the Pi won't connect. I re-installed and started from scratch and the same thing happened again (i.e. it initially worked and then stopped after being powered off). Google pointed me towards a power issue so I purchased a PiHut 7 Port Raspberry Pi USB Hub. I connected this and connected the hard drive through this but the problem remains. The LED on the WiPi is not on. I tried connecting the WiPi to the hub also but this didn't help.

Is there anything that I am missing? Any ideas appreciated.

[Ned Scott]

Do you know the model of the wifi dongle you are using?

[OnDeBanks]

Hi Ned,
It is a WiPi WiFi USB Dongle for Mutilple Development Platforms (http://www.element14.com/community/docs/...I-ACC-WIPI).

[Bosse_B]

I had trouble when setting up my Pi, which was caused by a poor connection cable from my power supply to the Pi.
After investigations I found that the black and red wires in the cable were WAY too thin and the voltage drop across 1m of cable was 0.4-0.5V!
I cut away the two connectors and spliced in a thicker black/red wire and after this I have had no problems.
You could check on the Pi board if you have this problem by connecting a DVM between TP1 and TP2. It shows the supply voltage on the Pi board. If it is lower than 4.9V or so I would replace the cable like I have suggested.

The Pi sort of worked but would not use the network properly (I have a wired network to my Pi). After fixing the cable I have not had any problems.

Btw, did you move the WiFi dongle over to the powered USB hub too?
A WiFi dongle will pull a considerable amount of power from the USB connector it sits on and the Pi USB is not able to support this.
If you still have it on the Pi I suggest the first test is to move it to the hub.

[OnDeBanks]

Hi Bosse,
I did try to connect the dongle to the powered hub too but it didn't make a difference. I'll try testing a different cable. I should have a shorter one somewhere.

[invisable]

I had exactly the same problems with my wipi dongle and raspbmc, however it worked on raspbain, xbian and openelec this was over a year ago though.

With the usb hard drive dissconected does it still fail to connect ?
Have you got a spare sd card you could try another operating system on ?

[dandnsmith]

I note that, in the first post, the system is stated as NOOBS with raspbmc.
I did have a problem with that WiPi device, briefly, when some raspbmc changes were made (before June), and I installed a new driver module to get it going.

I suggest that a posting of the configuration in use, together with raspbmc build details and XBMC build/version might throw some light, especially as the use of NOOBS will cloud version issues.
If you are in doubt as to the sort of detail, and how to find it, look in STM labs forum where a thread near the start tells you how to do it.

[DBMandrake]

Ditch the NOOBS install, download the Raspbmc installer from www.raspbmc.com, do a fresh install using that. (There's other good reasons not to use a NOOBS install as well)

It could be the firmware issue with the Ralink RT5370 chipset - installing an old out of date version of Raspbmc (as the noobs installer most likely does) and then allowing it to auto update to a later kernel will not update the firmware file, so the wireless adaptor works after the initial install but fails after the power is cycled.

Also as this is a Raspbmc specific problem your best option for support is the stmlabs forum as linked above.

[hiro24]

I'm afraid I can't offer any real help, but I made an account here just to say that I'm also having your exact problem. I've been having it for some time. It seemed to not be an issue in v12 (or if it was it wasn't as bad) but v13 is a nightmare. I'm also using Raspbmc with a WiPi. (In fact, I even bought a 2nd one thinking maybe the 1st one was faulty. It was not, same problem) I hope someone can shed some light on this problem, hopefully offer a working solution.