Raspberry Pi OS • How to turn off WiFi power management on Pi Zero W?

Hi, I've been pulling my hair out for weeks now. One of my Pi Zero W is randomly disconnecting from my WiFi network although the OS continues to run just fine while being offline. I have logs that continue to be written to, the OS is not crashed or anything. It just randomly drops the WiFi connection for no apparent reason, but this occurs at least 3 times a week, every week. I cannot reliably use a Raspberry Pi for monitoring the water level in my basement if it keeps disconnecting every other day or so.

I have read numerous threads all the way back to 2013 (11 years ago) where users report that it could be due to power management being turned on for the WiFi functionality on the Pi. I have run this command and on mine, it's indeed set to "on": A year and half ago, on this very forum, a well known user suggested to add before the exit line in the file /etc/rc.local, but after saving the changes and rebooting the Pi Zero W, it doesn't seem to have done anything... source: viewtopic.php?t=336276#p2013773

I also tried adding sudo before the command, but it did not do anything different. Though, when I manually run that command (with sudo) in bash, it works and WiFi power management toggles to "off". Upon reboot, the power management setting is back to "on".

Does anybody have a real permanent solution for turning the WiFi power management off on a Pi Zero W? It's impossible to use it for serious applications if it disconnects after only 24 or 48 hours.

Statistics: Posted by marc.tremblay.23789 — Mon Jan 01, 2024 4:33 pm

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