From the beginning of using Volumio, I had the problem that the WLAN connection was interrupted several times a day and the radio playback stopped. This occurred with the internal WLAN of the Rapberry Pi4 as well as with the external USB WLAN adapter. To reconnect, I had to restart the Rapberry Pi or briefly disconnect and reconnect the USB WLAN adapter. The cause of the interruptions was automatic WLAN channel changes in the Internet router (Fritzbox 7690). This is a standard setting and the optimal configuration for the devices in the network and the distribution of the channels for the own and nearby WLAN networks. All other devices in my WLAN (mobile devices, TV, printer, PC, Raspberry Pi 3 with PiHole installed) except the Rapberry Pi with Volumio do not have the problem and do a reconnect.
So the solution for me was to permanently assign a WLAN channel for both the 2.4 GHz and the 5 GHz WLAN in the Internet router. Since then (3 days ago) I have had no WLAN interruptions in Volumio.
It would be good to fix this problem in a new release!
Clarification on WLAN vs. Wi-Fi behavior in investigation
I’d like some clarification on what exactly is being investigated in this post. There seems to be some confusion between WLAN and Wi-Fi interface capabilities.
WLAN (Wireless Local Area Network) refers to any wireless network within a limited area, which can use various wireless technologies, including Wi-Fi.
Wi-Fi is a specific technology under WLAN, based on IEEE 802.11 standards.
Are we looking into a general issue with WLAN behavior on Volumio, or is this specifically about Wi-Fi (802.11) connectivity and automatic reconnection? It would help to clarify if the concern is about the interface itself, the network management behavior, or a specific configuration affecting reconnect behavior.
It is about Wi-Fi (802.11) connectivity and automatic reconnection (carrier lost). The power save feature of the WLAN adapter was always deactivated. But i think it is a general behavior on Volumio, because no other wireless devices have a problem to reconise/handle the automatic channel change in my access point.
Before jumping to conclusions about Volumio, I’d suggest testing the same Wi-Fi behavior on a generic Raspberry Pi OS (Buster or newer). Since Volumio is based on Debian Buster, this would help determine if it’s a general Linux issue with the Wi-Fi driver or something specific to Volumio’s network management.
Given that there are thousands of Volumio installations worldwide, and this is the first report of such an issue, it strongly suggests that the problem is specific to your WLAN environment rather than a general Volumio bug. Other Volumio users would likely have encountered similar issues if Volumio had a fundamental problem handling AP channel changes.
It could be related to:
The Wi-Fi adapter and its driver (some chipsets don’t handle DFS or dynamic channel switching well).
The specific access point behavior (e.g., how and when it changes channels, whether it briefly drops clients, or how it handles 802.11k/v/r roaming).
Network configuration settings that might influence reconnect behavior.
A good next step would be testing Raspberry Pi OS in the same environment. If the issue persists there, it’s likely a driver or AP-side issue. If not, then it might be worth investigating how Volumio’s network stack handles channel changes. Checking dmesg and journalctl -u wpa_supplicant logs during a channel switch could also provide insights.
The GitHub thread being referenced discusses issues reported back in 2017 with the Raspberry Pi Zero and early Raspberry Pi 3 models on Volumio 2. Given that the Fritz!Box 7690 wasn’t available at the time, and Volumio 3 introduces significant system changes, those reports are not relevant to this case.
To better understand what’s happening in your setup, could you provide the following details?
Your current /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf configuration (obfuscate private keys)
This will help verify if any settings may be affecting reconnection behavior.