New Pi Zero W, no wifi

Support
1

My new Pi Zero W arrived on Saturday and is great except no wifi. Wired ethernet connection via a USB to Ethernet adaptor does work. Bluetooth I am not sure about: I can make it discoverable and connect to another device, but I haven’t managed to get the audio go to it instead of just to HDMI (where audio does work).

I have done the usual update and upgrade after following the recommended procedure for formatting an SD card and installing Raspberrian. I have reformatted the card and repeated the process in case something was amiss, but wifi has stayed completely inoperable throughout.

What would be steps to troubleshoot this problem?

2

WIFI “Country” set in Raspbian configuration menu? Does it discover any networks? Sometimes it takes a while to discover networks.

3

Yeah I set the country to GB. It has had plenty of hours not to find a hub 2 meters away. The network tool on the taskbar has consistently indicated “no wireless interfaces found” and shows two red X’s unless I connect the ethernet via the USB. A scan of some hardware log (can’t recall name at this moment) showed no sign any wifi device was known to the system (which I think means the chip itself rather than any hub?)

“iwlist wlan0 scan” prints “Interface doesn’t support scanning”
“ifup wlan0” prints “ifup unknown interface wlan0”.

Seems to me the Pi can’t see the wifi functionality at all?

note that “ifconfig -a” gives information only for “eth0” and “lo”.

4

I have to ask the obvious question, are you sure its a Zero W and not just an earlier model Zero?

5

“/sys/firmware/device/base/model” says:
Raspberry Pi Zero W Rev. 1.1
Also, I can see the wifi/bluetooth chip

6

Ok, I had to ask anyway. ;) If it boots up it must be running a supported version of Raspbian. Can’t hurt to redo your card with the latest image though, if you haven’t already. Other than that I’d go to the main Shop page, link at top of this page. Then scroll down to the bottom of the page and look for a “contact us”. Click that and e-mail Pimoroni tech support with the issue. Put a link to this thread in their too. Then see what they say.

7

Cheers. Would have been nice if there was a solution, but sometimes there just isn’t.

8

There may be other things to try, I just don’t know what they might be? My Linux knowledge is pretty basic to be honest.

10

Thanks to Pimoroni for sending a replacement Pi Zero W.

I switched the micro-USB I had set up to this and the wifi started up first time with no problems, so it looks like a rare hardware problem on the first device.

11

It is rare but it happens. Good to hear your all sorted out now.