BCD536HP Wifi Locked Up

[mikev10]

Somehow I've managed to get my scanners wifi "locked up" tighter than a bulls butt.
It shows the wifi signal with an exclamation mark all the time. Tried hitting wifi reset
with dongle plugged in and with dongle unplugged. Dongle is at 7.28. Any ideas or
help appreciated. PS.... I hate this damned dongle set up.

 

[AlphaFive]

WiFi

I know less than zippo about WiFi and the 536... I have never hooked mine up in almost two years, never put it to use, but.. My 536 is running normally, off coax, plugged in, monitoring, and what you are showing on your unit screen is exactly the same thing I have, and have always had. I could not tell you what that means, but that's what mine looks like and always has. Take care

Okay, never mind me, I just took the time to look at the manual, it just indicates No Wifi, disregard the chimp, carry on

 

[mikev10]

That might help. Maybe my dongle is toast and the scanner isn't seeing it at all. Thanks.

 

[Jay911]

Whenever I have had trouble with either the scanner not "seeing" the wifi dongle (which seems to happen spontaneously once in a blue moon) or the entire wifi setup suddenly failing to be able to connect to any wifi network (again, happens sporadically, with no changes to the scanner or dongle), the following process recovers things nicely:

1. Power off the scanner.
2. Unplug the dongle.
3. Power on the scanner and let it get to normal operating condition (i.e. wait for it to finish booting up and start scanning).
4. Plug in the dongle.
5. After about 30 seconds, go into the wifi settings and select a network (if it didn't auto-connect already).

If it fails to connect after that, there might be something wrong with either the dongle or the radio.

My radio runs 24/7 and has recovered from wifi problems using the above procedure almost every time (only variation might involve me having to do it a couple of times in a row).

 

[mikev10]

Thanks Jay. That did it on first try. Many Thanks!

 

[ofd8001]

After long periods of scanning in my vehicle, more than 1 hour, if I stop and restart the scanner, it occasionally takes about 10 minutes for the dongle to wake itself back up.

The dongle was an interesting concept worth trying, but I think it hasn't lived up to everyone's expectations. In the beginning Uniden and the dongle manufacturer took a long time to get it functioning as it does, for better or worse.

 

[Jay911]

Just curious - I don't recall people giving Uniden such a hard time when they initially brought out P25 scanning via a daughtercard that was plugged in to the radio. Was there? I mean, yes, there were people who griped about not having their BC235s and 245s automatically just start receiving digital signals, without having to have this card added in, but those are the same cranks who expect firmware updates to change their radio from needing 4 AA batteries to only needing 3 - they don't understand that hardware technology changes over time and that no amount of programming will magically make new circuitry appear in a radio. Were there people who looked at the BCi25D cards and said it was an interesting concept that didn't measure up? Were they giving Uniden grief for using the daughterboard concept initially and then moving to incorporating P25 in the radio itself in later models?

Put another way - are people going to ***** and moan when Uniden (not guaranteed, but likely) includes wifi and/or GPS onboard the radio in a future model, complaining that they did it differently than with the 536's dongle?

 

[JamesO]

We need an optional hardwired dongle and static IP addressing.

I would bet people that would want this an an option would easily and gladly pay $40 each for these. Considering some of the USB hardwired dongles can be had for around $5 in quantity.

I would buy 2 without blinking an eye.

 

[mikev10]

I would pay $100.00!

 

[JamesO]

There is and will be clearly a market for hardwired dongles. Static IP addressing should be a firmware upgrade.

The issue with a hardwired dongle is Uniden would need to have the hooks in the firmware to support one specific dongle or a few basic dongles. It would take some time, but not much.

The development team should have ALREADY set up a hardwired dongle from the initial days of this scanner. This would have saved SO much time dealing with all the wireless problems and would have given the developers a stable platform to work out all of the networking and App based issue while the wireless bugs could have been worked out.

I am sure I would probably pay $50 each for a hardwired dongle.