Significant WiFi Signal Degradation on ESP32 Dev Boards

[bgondell]

Board

ESP-WROOM-32

Device Description

Description:
I've noticed a significant decline in WiFi performance on ESP32 development boards, which seems to have occurred after recent updates.

Problem Details:
The device is located 5 meters from the WiFi router with line of sight, yet 9 out of 10 connection attempts fail.
This issue persists across multiple boards and occurs regardless of the sketch used, including the standard WiFi example sketches provided in the ESP32 SDK.
WiFi connection stability and reliability have noticeably decreased compared to previous firmware versions.

Is anyone else experiencing similar issues? Any guidance or potential fixes would be appreciated.

Hardware Configuration

Two DHT22 sensors on pins 27 and 13.

Version

latest master (checkout manually)

IDE Name

Arduino

Operating System

Windows

Flash frequency

80Mhz

PSRAM enabled

yes

Upload speed

921600

Description

Expected Behavior:
Stable WiFi connectivity with a reasonable success rate at such a short distance from the router.

Actual Behavior:
Frequent connection failures, with a success rate of approximately 1 out of 10 attempts.

Sketch

WiFi.mode(WIFI_STA);
   WiFi.setTxPower(WIFI_POWER_21dBm);
   
   int ConnectionAttemps = 0;

   if (strlen(config.wifi_ssid) > 0) {
       Serial.print("Trying to connect to WiFi ");
       Serial.println(config.wifi_ssid);
       while ((WiFi.status() != WL_CONNECTED) && ConnectionAttemps < 5) {
          ConnectionAttemps++;
          Serial.print(ConnectionAttemps);
          Serial.print(",");
          WiFi.begin(config.wifi_ssid, config.wifi_pass);
          delay(10000);
          }
   }
   Serial.println();

Debug Message

Trying to connect to WiFi C.D.O.
1,E (817510) wifi:sta is connecting, return error
2,E (827512) wifi:sta is connecting, return error
3,E (837513) wifi:sta is connecting, return error
4,E (847514) wifi:sta is connecting, return error
5,E (857515) wifi:sta is connecting, return error

Other Steps to Reproduce

No response

I have checked existing issues, online documentation and the Troubleshooting Guide

• I confirm I have checked existing issues, online documentation and Troubleshooting guide.

[me-no-dev]

can you please set the core debug level to "Verbose" in the board menu and paste the output or upload it as text file. Also no need to call WiFi.begin() multiple times