IP address in 169.254/16 range and flashing green light

Hi there,
I have the Iota for 18 months now and it never really skipped a beat but a few days ago it stopped working and today I found some time to look at it.
Firstly, I configured my dhcp to always give it the same IP, lets say 192.68.10.10.
So this IP was not reachable anymore. I checked my router and saw that the same MAC address got an IP address from the range 169.254/16, lets say 169.254.11.11. This IP was pingable and I tried to access this IP but wasn’t able to connect to anything even though nmap reported port 80 to be open it would close on me very quickly again.
Next step was opening up my enclosure where the IOTA is hidden and have a look at the LED which was flashing green very quickly at the stage which continued for several hours.
I read that 169.254/16 addresses mean wifi issues but since I was able to ping it unit that doesn’t seem to be valid.
Please advise.

Do you have the original order number or could you private message the name purchased under? This could be one of the bad SDcard batch.

I suspected…

Given that you are reporting no changes to your WiFi environment, there is high probability that you have a defective SDcard. These days, the only problems reported are either WiFi or SDcard, and virtually all SDcard issues stem from that bad batch in Nov-Dec 2022.

If you remove the SDcard and look at the back, it probably matches this:

I would replace the SDcard and see if it resolves your issues:

Hello, yesterday my Iotawatt start showing this exact same behavior – It refuses to accept an IP address from the DHCP server. Network trace shows that it clearly offers an address, but the Iotawatt refuses to take it. Tried a new card, no difference, checked if any state files in the SPIFF filesystem might be to blame but found little. Eventually the Iotawatt comes up with a 169.254 address and I’m able to get to it by configuring an interface on that range via multicast dns, but I’m at a loss as to why this suddenly stopped accepting DHCP assigned address. I’ve tried statically assigning it to different IPs also with no results.

Was there a firmware update pushed yesterday?

There was no IoTaWatt firmware update pushed, but your message log would show any update caused by other stimulus.

You might also insure there were no firmware updates pushed to any of your WiFi equipment like router, DHCP server if separate or APs.

If this were an IoTaWatt change issue, this forum would light up.

I’ve been running down a rabbithole for most of the day looking at issues with dnsmasq and ESP32’s that noone can explain. I’m not sure why this happened now, I’ve been using dnsmasq since… 2010-ish. But symptoms are the same as all over the internet, the iotawatt does a dhcp discover, the dhcp servers does an offer, but the esp32 never comes back with a request that the server can issue an ack for.

Have been using pi-hole for dhcp, tried it with my Asus router with same results, will probably enable dnsmasq on Solaris 11 which I’m pretty sure has no recent updates but have been tearing those out since Oracle has locked up the updates.

Not what I entended on spending my day on… Argh!

For what it’s worth the IoTawatt uses an ESP8266.

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ok, finally found some time to take it all apart and change the SD card.
What I did:
(1) removed old sdcard and dumped files onto my laptop
(2) formatted new sdcard and restored dumped files onto the new card
(3) put new card into iotawatt and restarted.

Everything seems to work fine now. It still recorded all the data until I changed the SD card. Now it gets an IP out of 192.168/16 range again as expected.
Thats it. Nothing else to report. For what its worth the old SDcard was blue on front.
ATMMSASP6G0 2136G903007 on the back … Made in Taiwan

Cheers,
Martin

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I got excited too soon … The box ran for around an hour and then turned off. Now, it looks like its really messed up. Doesn’t even seem to start up anymore. No lights, no nothing. Any advise?

Would you like to send it in for diagnosis and possible repair? Worse case is I replace the PCB for $70.