Default settings for Adafruit QT Py ESP32-S3 cant connect to wifi

[jesseadams]

CircuitPython version and board name

Adafruit CircuitPython 10.1.4 on 2026-03-09; Adafruit QT Py ESP32-S3 no psram with ESP32S3
Board ID:adafruit_qtpy_esp32s3_nopsram

Code/REPL

from os import getenv
import ipaddress
import wifi
import socketpool

# Get WiFi details, ensure these are setup in settings.toml
ssid = getenv("CIRCUITPY_WIFI_SSID")
password = getenv("CIRCUITPY_WIFI_PASSWORD")

if None in [ssid, password]:
    raise RuntimeError(
        "WiFi settings are kept in settings.toml, "
        "please add them there. The settings file must contain "
        "'CIRCUITPY_WIFI_SSID', 'CIRCUITPY_WIFI_PASSWORD', "
        "at a minimum."
    )

print()
print("Connecting to WiFi")

#  connect to your SSID
try:
    wifi.radio.connect(ssid, password)
except TypeError:
    print("Could not find WiFi info. Check your settings.toml file!")
    raise

print("Connected to WiFi")

pool = socketpool.SocketPool(wifi.radio)

#  prints MAC address to REPL
print("My MAC addr:", [hex(i) for i in wifi.radio.mac_address])

#  prints IP address to REPL
print(f"My IP address is {wifi.radio.ipv4_address}")

#  pings Google
ipv4 = ipaddress.ip_address("8.8.4.4")
print("Ping google.com: %f ms" % (wifi.radio.ping(ipv4)*1000))

Behavior

Connecting to WiFi
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "code.py", line 27, in <module>
ConnectionError: Unknown failure 2

It fails to connect to wifi and the board feels hot.

Description

Thanks to BobG on Discord for a fix.

1. Add the following to boot.py:

import wifi
wifi.radio.tx_power=15

2. Reset the board
3. Wifi works!

Additional information

No response

[grgrant]

Thank you Jesse for submitting the report. The board I had this problem on was a QtPy ESP32-S3 4M Flash 2M PSRAM. So I believe it is happening on both QtPy ESP32-S3 versions.

And this would be great to somehow be added into the wifi library because even if you fix the problem in the boot.py and then later shutdown wifi to save power in your code, when you restart it later it defaults back to 20 so there is no way to permanently set a lower TX power as the default for WiFi. Additionally, deep sleep causes the same reset because WiFi has to get re-initialized after waking (and boot.py is not executed -- I don't think when waking from deep sleep).

[anecdata]

On the other hand, we don't know how many people would be affected if the default wifi power was changed. It may depend on chip or board variations, and it may depend on local user wifi environment. For example, I have never seen this problem across dozens of Adafruit, Espressif, and other manufacturer ESP32-S3 boards (including many QT Py) since the ESP32-S3 became available. So if there is to be a core or library change that kicks in automatically every time wifi is (re-)started, it should be something user-configurable (e.g., settings.toml).

[dhalbert]

These are the espressif boards that currently have non-default tx power settings on startup:

boards/01space_lcd042_esp32c3/mpconfigboard.h:23:#define CIRCUITPY_WIFI_DEFAULT_TX_POWER   (11.0)
boards/adafruit_qtpy_esp32c3/mpconfigboard.h:30:#define CIRCUITPY_WIFI_DEFAULT_TX_POWER   (15)
boards/lolin_c3_mini/mpconfigboard.h:31:#define CIRCUITPY_WIFI_DEFAULT_TX_POWER   (11.0)
boards/makergo_esp32c3_supermini/mpconfigboard.h:27:#define CIRCUITPY_WIFI_DEFAULT_TX_POWER   (11.0)

[grgrant]

My opinion is it would be best to have a default that would work for the majority of boards even if there might be variances in how they operate. For what it's worth the default operation of the CP wifi stack seems to be to use the max power even if the RSSI from the AP (in my case within 20 feet and no walls between) is high. This does seem to cause issues with my QtPy ESP32-S3 devices. In comparison the TinyS2 from UM currently on sale at Adafruit has a 4x larger chip antenna and double the received RSSI signal compared to the QtPy and it does not suffer from the TX_POWER overload issue in my testing.

That being said, I do support a user-configurable setting in settings.toml so this could be adjusted in a 'permanent' default for a particular system by the user.