Wifi and LCD issues with Pi Zero 2W and Stelian's tinypilot13-20240915

[chakra]

Hi everyone,

First post here so let me start by thanking Sean and everyone else who helped create this wonderful project. 

I successfully got OpenPlotter and pypilot to work on a Pi 5 with MacArthur HAT and the 15A Navitop Motor Controller and was feeling quite happy with myself.  I have some experience with linux but I'm an amateur not an expert. 

Now I'm trying to make tinypilot work on a Pi Zero 2W.  I'm using Stelian's tinypilot13-20240915.img but I'm having issues with:

a)  the client Wifi: it seems like the Client wifi and password get corrupted sometimes and I can't get them to work again, short of re-flashing the SD card and starting again from zero.  What's the secret?  I looked in /opt/wpa_supplicant.conf but that contains variables like %SSID% and %KEY% and I don't understand where these are set.    
I am using AP+Client mode.  Client mode only works a little better it seems but sooner or later it seems to run into problems.  I dont' have a reproducible bug yet because it takes me so much time when I have to set everything up again.

b) I'm trying to connect a 20x4 LCD screen with a backpack, using VCC/GND/SDA/SCL and a bi-directional 3.3V-5V shifter in the middle.  I have everything wired up correctly I think, the LCD just displays alternating two rows of squares and two blank lines.  I checked the contrast pot but no luck there.  There's no i2detect so how does one find out what address the lcd is connected to?  

My questions: is anyone successfully running this image on a Pi Zero 2W?  Do you have any suggestions?

Regards,
chakra

[chakra]

OK I can confirm the bug. Steps to reproduce this:

1. Flash new 32Gb SD card with tinypilot13-20240915.img.
2. Start up the Pi Zero 2W with the SD card.
3. Connect to the pypilot Wifi and configure the Wifi: Managed (client) with my home wifi and password and DHCP (I also tried a fixed IP address, and I also tried AP+Client). 

4. Click Submit
5. sudo reboot (I also tried shutting down by pulling the power, makes no difference)
6. when the Pi reboots, the pypilot Wifi is gone (even if you choose AP+Client).
7. When I look into ifconfig, it only shows lo (127.0.0.1) and wlan0 (192.168.14.1) but not my home wifi network.

Has anyone got a workaround? Should I get a Pi Zero instead? I really want the autopilot part of my project to be completely self-contained and also I want to place it close to the Motor Controller which has to be close to the rudder, in one of the aft cabins. The main boat "brain" will be a Pi 5 with a Macarthur HAT.

[chakra]

At this point I'm leaning heavily towards using a Pi3B+ instead. It seems a lot easier to configure and also can be connected to the Pi 5 via PoE.