Is there anyway to force connman to prioritise different wifi networks the way you can if you use wpa_supplicant?
I know how to disable conmann and use wpa_supplicant in its place, which I have figured out before when I have installed a dekstop and actually wanted to be able to connect to a different network without having to do it in OSMC.
The dekstops all appear to use wpa_supplicant/network manager.
So you can prioritize one network over another and know exactly what order it will try to connect.
But connman sees to only work for one connection at a time?
Which is fine if you are happy to type in whatever passwords using your remote or BT keyboard, but is a pain if you were travelling or whatever.
I have recently found the connman settings:
/var/lib/connman
And there is a “Favourite” option.
And ive seen documentation which referres to “autoconnect‑priority” but this appear to be an older version of connman and I cant find any current reference to it.
So is connection priority not something that is available in OSMC?
Should it really not be a feature in modern wifi enabled device, perhaps osmc should use network manager to align with other Pi distros and support this necessary feature of auto network switching.
Hi
Can you explain the use case?
We do – if one WiFi network goes down, ConnMan will connect to another.
So if there is more than one network it doesn’t just connect to the last connected network.
Eg if a hotspot is active connect to that preferentially over a broadband WiFi
So for example I can force a connection to my phone in instances of troubleshooting.
Or to auto connect to a WiFi extender network if that has better signal than the prior network if you move rooms
Fair enough it will connect to another network if it looses connection but it doesn’t choose the best connection, unless I’m mistaken.
And I’m not convinced it does reconnect to a different network if it looses connection without a reboot. Something I’d have to test, can’t say the last time it would have happened.
What is the ‘best connection’ and how would OSMC be expected to ascertain this metric?
The strongest signal, the highest priority order specified in wpa supplicant?
All I know is when I’ve installed a desktop alongside osmc, the wpa supplicant interface/config as used in desktops (once connman is disabled) is way more user-friendly if you have more than one WiFi you want to use.
Possibly not as neat with Bluetooth, WiFi and ethernet all in one place.
But definitely more useful if you aren’t always connecting to the same wifi
Strongest signal doesn’t always mean best performance. Usually, a 2.4Ghz band will have a stronger signal but deliver lower performance than a 5Ghz band.