Los Angeles area
if your telemetry is not getting reported - i.e. your âballoonâ is not showing up on the map, âmy.outernet.isâ wonât work for you - it canât.
Don, status.outernet.is is correct. Los Angeles is a crowded area for balloons (you must be 1 of the 3 showing now), but to see if one of them is you, take a screen print, then turn off your system so it reports nothing for maybe 15 minutes then look again to see if one of the balloons disappeared.
I do that here in Washington, DC, area and I see my balloon go away, but Iâm the only balloon in Washington - - except for the politicians. 
Ken
Ken ⌠I see my location and on the globe too! And weather animation. Cool!
If I wanted to go back to hotspot for some reason, do I just select âhotspotâ?
I got a feeling it wonât work.
Yes thatâs exactly what to do. Up above, Abhishek told me to revert back to the hot spot without having to reset the Network Tab, all you have to do is disable your local WiFi, and the device not seeing the Access Point will automatically revert. I tried it and it worked, but I had to fool around a bit like you to get my device to become visible thru its own hot spot OUTERNET. You know - - powering off, then on, then kicking it, then re powering off and on and off and on and . . .
Ken
The hotspot on the CHIP is a little underpowered, due to the lack of a proper wifi antenna. Usually you can see and connect to it reliably within a couple of meters of the CHIP. Any longer distance and it becomes a bit of a hit-or-miss. Once connected(associated) you can usually move away.
Yes you are correct. When I used the Hot Spot, I always put a powerful WiFi repeater within its coverage area to get its signal out. When I connect the CHIP to my house WiFi, I reconfigure the repeater to rebroadcast my house WiFi signal to the CHIP.
Both approaches work great. Ken
Would this mean killing the local router Wi-Fi temporarily till the Dashboard shows âhot spotâ? Then re-booting everything till the Netbook is again in control with itâs Wi-Fi?
Well yes, if your router is a WiFi too like Verizon and Comcast provide here on the East coast. You could always go into router and just turn off the WiFi portion leaving the router function running. Ken
there is no need for all that. just switch the mode to hotspot from the librarian UI. I am not sure why you think âit wonât workâ.
As I recall when switching back to hot spot, the firmware turned off the built-in wi-fi of RPi 3.0. Rebooting the Pi never turned it back on. I may be wrong, but I tried it twice.
the same mechanism is used internally to switch to hotspot mode from station mode - whether you switch it manually in the UI or it automatically flips back to hotspot on wifi association failure. If one doesnât work, nor would the other.
One very common problem with RPI3, and our original motivation to move to CHIP, is the fact that most sdcards out there are bad quality, and they fail to register writes after brief use - leading to all sorts of weird and unexpected behaviour: massive slowdowns, failed boots, failure to update configuration.
If you are seeing consistent problem with RPI3, my suggestion would be to try a new, good quality sdcard, or to just get a CHIP.
I myself run the 3.1 image on an RPI3, and wifi switching works fine - so I know that the software is allright. But sdcards are a common source of problems with RPI3.
OK specifically your steps to go back to hot spot?
just go into the network settings and switch the wireless mode to âhotspotâ. Kensâ version is also fine - and would do no harm, its just a roundabout way of getting the same result.