Of late, does the web app seem flakier than usual?

It’s always been pretty smooth sailing for me, but recently it’s been batty.

I am not posting this in P&S because I don’t want to involve Support, I know the usual advice, nothing has changed on my side, and I have the usual opinions on the high quality of my wifi and internet. I am hoping for a discussion on our perceptions.

This is weird stuff I saw recently.

  • Often I click Print, and after scanning the head moves home and… Nothing happens. No white light shows up. Meanwhile the web browser still shows that it is ready to go. I have to Cancel and print again. That usually works. (This happened BEFORE the update with sleep.)
  • In between prints I have long pauses where it says “Scanning.” (Began with the Sleep update)
  • In between prints it may go Offline and I have to power cycle and cross fingers. (Began with the Sleep update)

It’s kind of a mess tonight.

Not here. Only thing I’ve seen is the print window, when you push print to initiate a print, seems to automatically minimize rather than staying in the foreground like before.

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I’ve seen this sporadically too. I have to hit the Print icon again to bring it forward.

I’ve had my GF act as though my network is unstable lately even though I don’t experience that much elsewhere. Of course, you’re in a van down by the river these days, so who am I to complain?

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With a decent view this AM :slight_smile:

Actually, I’ve been very surprised that it is behaving as well as it is. My MiFi is currently limited to 600Kb by Verizon, since I blew through the 15gb data limit (on “unlimited” lol) on the first day… I have not noticed a change at all in the calibration process (I presume it is a small amount of data and the bed images aren’t very large). It is definitely slower downloading jobs (and I haven’t done any large engraves that would push the 100mb file limit / 3 hour job). But it’s stable as can be… I’m happy!

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Livin’ the dream!

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I have seen dozens of folks upgrade their internet speeds in hopes of fixing various issues. Shake my head every time. The GF doesn’t need speed to operate. It only needs a stable connection.

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Looking at logs from my GF, after having to forward to Bonny for another issue, I’ve noticed quite a lot of instances where the GF is unable to connect to the app; which is causing weird issues periodically, but infrequently. I believe it’s an ISP problem, or an upstream problem somewhere causing issues, but I’m not sure. For me, it doesn’t appear to be a GF issue, but it does show one of the true downsides of leveraging a cloud solution.

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Same here–never had that happen until this past week…
And the other night the app did totally shut itself down–was OK when I opened it up again (fortunately not while running a job).

But I have to say I was amazed a couple weeks ago when a job kept running even when my wi-fi signal died during the run! That surprised me–I didn’t expect it could finish–but maybe a small enough job it fit in any “buffer” in the system?

Flakey connection:
I’m on my 3rd “new” model of the latest Xfinity modem (XB6?) in about the same # of months. First was unknown, tech just replaced it, the 2nd was overheating and about 12-18 hours would drop signal (I even used ice packs around it to get me through a couple more days until I was able to replace it). I suspect they didn’t put in a big enough fan given how small it is now & all components so close together = poor air flow = harder to cool down… hope they are tracking returns/failure reports on this model!

But when it’s working, it does provide stronger signal strength to my GF that is upstairs…

Once a job has been processed and downloaded, you can shut off the computer, and the WiFi if you really wanted; it’s loaded in the on-board memory. There is no streaming of jobs at this time, which is why the 3/3.5 hr limit exists (it butts up against the onboard memory storage limit).

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Thanks, seems didn’t read that detail in the specs for the “buffer”.

Flakier for me today–first print trying to do, and is stuck in “uploading” on the GFUI, BUT the button lit up, and able to run the job, despite the GFUI stuck. Refreshed the GFUI, and it’s now showing the time count for the job…

i have to say, i’m overall disappointed in the quality of the wifi in the GF. for a machine that relies on an internet connection, it seems to have far more consistent connection problems with a large enough segment of the users than it really ought to.

not sure if it’s a hardware issue or a build issue (something inside the hardware blocking signal?), but whatever it is, it’s definitely more of a problem than it ought to be considering one of the biggest criticisms i see from outside the GF community is the need for an active internet connection.

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I’d say, maybe once a week or more, that I wish it had a LAN port. I mean, I would have spent the extra $15 it would have cost for it. If they knew it was going to always need an internet connection, you’d think that would be one of the main components. I’m sure I read somewhere at some point why they didn’t include it, but there will never be a valid enough excuse for me for why the exclusion of it.

I just barely got my machine back from a repair, and other than what @jbmanning5 mentioned of the window minimizing, the only surprise was the sleep mode for me. That is certainly nice, but a little freaky after just having the machine repaired and not knowing about the new mode! Luckily I put two and two together and figured it was a new feature, and then noticed it on my dashboard as an update.

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if it had a wifi card as reliable as my laptop or my phone, i’d be fine with wifi.

but alas, it’s not as reliable.

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FWIW, I use a mesh network topology (3 nodes) and have never had a wifi problem with the GF (note: house only 1300sf + 450sf garage, GF in garage).

I never had a problem with my connection… until I did.

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Having the same issues. I know for sure it isn’t my network either. Just started about a week ago or so.

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I’ve been seeing something similar to this tonight. I click print, it does the scanning step where it checks the thickness with the red laser, it homes the head, and then stops. No dialog box pops up in the user interface telling me that it’s read to print, and no white light on the Glowforge. If I click print again it works fine. It’s happened two or three times (out of about 15-20 print operations).

My network connection here is rock solid: 10 Gbps up/down, although obviously wifi can’t take advantage of that full speed) with redundant backbone connections. (It’s a consortium of five colleges and two graduate schools; we need serious Internet connectivity.) And I’m right next to the Cisco wireless access point. Wifi stats show a very strong signal.

I’m pretty sure the problem is either a bug in the web app or a problem with the cloud server.

That has been noted by support and supposedly an easy fix but mine is still doing it as well. For some reason occasionally it stays up, often after it has been down and back up, but I have yet to figure exactly what causes it to act correctly.

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