I’ve got a somewhat odd problem with my SA30. I just updated it to the latest build (host v1.72, net v2057, ARC v1.7, ARC Rx 1.0.0) via USB, and now when I try to configure it to the wireless network, Google Home connects to the device without trouble, but when it tries to connect to the network, it fails.
What’s interesting is that I’ve tried all the usual drills.
Ensure device has been removed from Google Home
FAT32 USB stick, freshly formatted, containing only the new image.swu
Power off, disconnected all speaker wires, inserted USB stick
Held down service reset button, power on, waited 60s before releasing
Update flow went through normally, ending in “Update Completed”
Net reset
System reset
Power off, reconnect speakers, power on, go into NET input
Open Google Home, attempt to add new device
Connects to device and tones play through the speakers
Attempt to connect to wifi network (and verified SSID and password)… and nothing happens until it times out.
My WiFi router shows no attempt to connect to it, and the SA30 itself persistently shows no SSID, IP 0.0.0.0.
I’ve tried a few extra net resets, and repeating the procedure from scratch (down to reformatting the USB stick and downloading a fresh image.swu) a few times, and the same thing happens each time.
What’s frustrating is that before this upgrade, it was basically working – except that it kept trying to download and install the latest firmware every time I powered on, and would end with “Update Failed.”
OK – after most of a day of debugging (of the sort that involved a lot of ssh’ing in to routers) I have finally found the issue. Sharing the results here in case anyone else ever runs in to this.
The root cause is that the 802.11 hardware on the SA30 is a bit ancient and doesn’t interact well with any networks that try to do “smart roaming” between the 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands. This is going to be especially pronounced if you have a mesh network that uses both, which a lot of modern home networks do.
The workaround is:
Don’t use smart roaming, have distinct 2.4 and 5GHz networks, and connect your SA30 to the 2.4GHz network. This is simple but won’t work if you have a fancy mesh network which balances between those as part of how it handles backhauls. OR
Create a guest network that’s 2.4GHz-only and connect the SA30 to that. If you do this, make sure to deactivate any sort of AP isolation on the network – many routers will do this on guest networks by default as a security measure, but it means that if your phone and your SA30 are connected to the same network (as they’ll have to be to do setup), they won’t be able to see each other and therefore it won’t work.
Once you have this set up, connect your mobile device to the 2.4GHz network, do a network and a system reset of your SA30, and then go through the device configuration flow in the usual fashion.
After this, you can reconnect your mobile device to your ordinary network.