Unable to connect to wifi: Auth Expired and Association Expired

ESPHome
1

Hi, all.

I have a problem that I see others are having, but the posts don’t have any comments, so I’m hoping mine will get one.

I have an ESP32 device that has been running perfectly for weeks (months?). Today I unplugged it and went to move it to another location in the house, and suddenly it is now unable to connect to wifi. Connecting to its AP and looking at its logs, I see:

[I][wifi:300]: WiFi Connecting to 'redacted'...
[W][wifi_esp32:458]: Event: Disconnected ssid='redacted' bssid=[redacted] reason='Auth Expired'
[W][wifi:618]: Error while connecting to network.
[I][wifi:300]: WiFi Connecting to 'redacted'...
[W][wifi_esp32:458]: Event: Disconnected ssid='redacted' bssid=[redacted] reason='Association Expired'
[W][wifi:639]: WiFi Unknown connection status 0

It keeps doing this forever, sometimes showing Auth Expired and sometimes showing Association Expired.

I have several WLANs, and I have tried them all, and the device just won’t connect to any of them. As I said, this device worked perfectly until a couple hours ago.

Any idea how I can fix this?

I have tried downloading the latest bin file for it and reinstalling it directly with Web ESPHome, and that didn’t help.

My next attempt will be to delete the device (saving its yaml file of course), then starting fresh and recreating it.

Edited to add:

I used Web ESPHome to start over with one of the devices, and I can’t even get past the main “connect to wifi” screen – it just says “Unable to connect” after I give the credentials and press “Connect.”

As I said, this is a brand new problem today, and I did not make any changes to the network. Any ideas what I should look at?

Edited to add:

I have completely rebooted my network (Ubiqiti USG, 3 UI switches, 2 UI APs), and I have reflashed the device again using Web ESPHome, and still no success connecting the device to my network.

I’m completely dead here - anybody have any ideas?

I did update ESPHome and the ESPHome firmware on these devices today. Did that maybe cause this issue?

2

Old thread but I had the same issue and managed to figure it out, I think.

Mine was partially not working (WiFi sometimes connected) but then completely WiFi-busted Wemos ESP32C3 board - Wifi not connected to the esp32 module. · Issue #2144 · espressif/arduino-esp32 · GitHub was the ticket for me, lowering the WiFi power from the default (docs):

wifi:
  output_power: 8.5dB

Other threads I went through, in case they’re helpful for anyone else.

Those seem to point to interference, though I kind of suspect a power issue since, thinking back - it might have only worked when plugged directly into my computer with USB-C vs USB-A.