Does wifi work on 5GHz or only 2.4GHz?  

RE: Does wifi work on 5GHz or only 2.4GHz?

I don't own a MK4 but my uneducated guess is that it won’t. That’s based on personal experience because, even if my router works with both 2.4 and 5GHz bands, of the devices that I connect to the network, only my Xiaomi phone supports 5GHz. My two Canon printers, mini computer, Sony camera and Voron 3D printer will connect only at 2.4GHz, so I expect that Prusa’s very-slow-wifi won’t support 5GHz either  I can be wrong of course. Let's see what other MK4 users can say about this. 

RE: Does wifi work on 5GHz or only 2.4GHz?

I believe it uses an ESP32-WROOM-32 module, which does not support 5 Ghz.

RE: Does wifi work on 5GHz or only 2.4GHz?

2.4 only - but it's so slow it's borderline useless (same with eth) so plan on either USB or Octoprint.

RE: Does wifi work on 5GHz or only 2.4GHz?

I did not look under the cover of mine when it was still outside the enclosure, but from what I see in the photo in this article, it is an ESP-01S, which uses an ESP8266. Boards with ESP32 can support a live camera stream over Wi-Fi, e.g. the ESP32-CAM boards. Those should be a lot faster.

RE: Does wifi work on 5GHz or only 2.4GHz?

2.4 only - but it's so slow it's borderline useless (same with eth) so plan on either USB or Octoprint.

Yes, WiFi speed is painful. It's a bit better with the latest firmware but still embarrassing. Ethernet is in my hands about 3x faster and doable. 

RE: Does wifi work on 5GHz or only 2.4GHz?

The wifi module plugs in - so maybe there is a faster module that may be available in the future?

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Ian

RE: Does wifi work on 5GHz or only 2.4GHz?

Probably Raspberry Pis for Octoprint will be cheap again before that, I think. 🙂

RE:

depends where the bottleneck is.. If it is in the wifi module, or further down in the architecture.. 

Posted by: @ian-harris

The wifi module plugs in - so maybe there is a faster module that may be available in the future?

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Ian

RE: Does wifi work on 5GHz or only 2.4GHz?

No way while MK4 will use the ESP8266 (that is 2.4GHz), and an even slower SERIAL communication between the board and the ESP8266...

RE: Does wifi work on 5GHz or only 2.4GHz?

Ok, the first question was about connecting MK4 to 5GHz WiFi, so it cannot be done using the existing WiFi module, simply because that module doesn't have support for 5 GHz. Also, that module indeed communicates via Serial protocol to the microcontroller. Additional Serial protocol isn't fast, and it certainly isn't developed with speed in mind.

In my view, I think that the Prusa development team created additional features without sacrificing any existing things because the serial port is standardly available on the CPU and ESP 01 is one of the first modules for Serial to WiFi support at a very reasonable price at less than 2 US$.

If you need to connect to 5GHz WiFi network even if you need something more than standard WPA-PSK I will suggest using some personal ADSL or mobile network router with WiFI and wired port/s (you may go very cheap for less than 20 US$ buying some used or old one).