+1
Fixed

Fail to Connect

Thomas Forrester 10 years ago updated by Guido 4 years ago 7
Hi guys,

I just wanted to alert you to a situation I face fairly frequently with XiiaLive on my HTC One running android version 4.4.2.  This situation occurs when I am in a weak signal area of my home, which unfortunately is where I hook my phone up to my living room stereo.

Often, the Wi-Fi signal strength shown in the status bar will be two, maybe three arcs, but definitely below full strength.  When I use XiiaLive to connect to a favorite Internet radio station, a "failed to connect" condition is fairly likely.  When this happens, and even if the signal strength increases, maybe because I move out of the way a little bit or hold the device in a different position, XiiaLive will never recover from this condition and connect to the stream.

I can, however, switch Wi-Fi off, in which case XiiaLive immediately connects via the mobile network, and then turn Wi-Fi on again, stop the stream in XiiaLive, and then restart it.  At that point, the stream is properly connected via Wi-Fi, and it's all good.

I hope with this information you might be able to locate something in the code that is preventing a successful retry to connect to a stream under marginal Wi-Fi signal strength.

I have two other quick questions that this has brought to mind.

When I switch off Wi-Fi and XiiaLive connects to the mobile network, will it ever automatically reconnect to Wi-Fi when it becomes available again, or once connected to the mobile network, is the app locked onto the mobile network and unable to switch back to Wi-Fi?

And finally, on the stream graph at the bottom of the app, when the buffer index markers are red, does this indicate that the app is using the mobile network?  Usually when on Wi-Fi those markers are white, and I only see red when I'm on the mobile network.  Just wanted to verify that red means I'm on the mobile network.

Thanks guys!  As always, XiiaLive is my go-to app for Internet radio.  There's no better app out there.

Tom (djMot)
~ Girls Rock Radio

Answer

Answer
Fixed

Hey Thomas, sorry we never got back to you on this topic. We have since made various modifications to the app to be a bit smarter and faster and should have resolved your issue. If for some reason you are still having issues please let us know.

Under review
Hi Tom, great feedback. I think the WiFi issues we will need you to reproduce and trigger a bug report. The bug report will hopefully give us a hint of what is going on. When you send us the bug report you can simply paste the url to this forum post to give us a hint of what the bug report is about.

About your other questions:
1. XiiaLive will not affect how the phone functions. So the general case is that the device automatically connects to WiFi when WiFi is enabled and it finds a WiFi connection which has already connected to. So the answer is yes from mobile network to WiFi should be automatic.

2. The red markers simply shows you that a disconnection happened and the stream engine recovered. Kinda shows you that we did something awesome. :P Here is a bit more info about the seekbar.
Hi Jona,

Thanks for the reply.

Before I get to the error logs you requested, I'd like to make a request of my own.  That is that you make the seekbar change color as an indication of streaming from WiFi or from the Mobile network.  I would really appreciate an at-a-glance indication that that I'm not on WiFi - something really in-your-face rather than that tiny little WiFi icon in the status bar.  I cannot tell you the number of times I've forgotten to turn WiFi back on after being in the car or away from my WiFi.  In most cases, it's no big deal, but with streaming media, the potential to accidentially consume way too much of your monthly allotment early in the month is really frustrating.  Maybe I should just use Tasker to change my background whenever I'm off my WiFi,.  Not sure, but it can probably do that.  But for those who don't have a clue, nor the inclination to learn how to do that, an obvious in-app indication would go a long way toward saving a lot of peoples' bandwidth (and make you even more of a hero! :) )

Okay, back to the matter at hand...

Today I had one of my fail to connect problems.  As you requested, I captured 3 bug reports for you.  They are as follows:

The first was created as XiiaLive was actively attempting, and failing to connect to the Girls Rock Radio stream.
1.bugreport-wifi-failing.txt

Immediately after creating the first bug report, and while XiiaLive was still actively attempting to connect, I turned WiFi off.  XiiaLive immediately connected via the Mobile network, and began streaming audio.  I generated this bugreport at that time.
2.bugreport-on-mobile.txt

Once the stream was connected and playing over the Mobile network, I re-enabled WiFi, then generated this final bugreport.
3.bugreport-wifi-re-enabled.txt

I have no idea if there is any overlap between these files.  But regardless, I hope they can give you a clue as to why I'm unable to connect when there is a valid WiFi connection available without cycling the connection for XiiaLive.

One further note:  I have a Roku 3 in my house.  Little did I know when I bought it that it creates its own 2.4GHz WiFi access point.  Not only that, but it creates it on the exact same channel as the WiFi network it is otherwise connected to.  It creates this access point because its own remote control communicates with it via WiFi rather than IR or RF.  There is no way to change its WiFi channel.  Stupid if you ask me.  Because it acts as a huge interference source, I have told all devices that are able, my HTC One included, to use the 5GHz WiFi network instead of 2.4GHz.  This does not seem to pose any operational hardship on the HTC One, but I thought I would mention it as it is perhaps not the typical configuration.  There is no congestion on the 5GHz band in my area.
Have the bug reports I've submitted given you any clues?
Answer
Fixed

Hey Thomas, sorry we never got back to you on this topic. We have since made various modifications to the app to be a bit smarter and faster and should have resolved your issue. If for some reason you are still having issues please let us know.