HomePass Nuance

Last Tuesday, Nintendo released a new panel for Puzzle Swap, and so naturally I used HomePass to get it just like always.  Lately I've taken to dumping my homebrew-fueled infinite supply of play coins into getting all the blue pieces before going on HomePass, so I can share out the blue pieces while getting the pink pieces.  For whatever reason it now seems to take closer to a week to complete each new puzzle, instead of the less-than-a-day I experienced when I first got going with HomePass.

Something I'd been doing in the past but kinda stopped doing more recently, was adding the SSID my HomePass setup was using to the connection list in System Settings.  After all, that SSID is already in a list on the 3DS that it checks and auto-connects to if possible, so I figured adding it to the connection list wasn't really necessary and stopped adding it.  HomePass still works without it there, so... must be redundant, right?

Then, I began noticing some things.

First, it was taking my 3DS upwards of 30 seconds to a minute, sometimes more, to connect to my HomePass setup, whereas it had been much quicker in the past.  Also, it wasn't getting groups of people while I had the system open, which it had also been doing in the past (contrary to popular belief, StreetPass does indeed work with the system open).

Adding the SSID I was using to the connection list solved both of these issues.

I guess what I'm trying to say here is, if you're setting up HomePass and noticing some unreliability, try adding the SSID your setup is using to your connection list.  Preferably in Connection 1, or barring that, above your normal internet connection.  The 3DS tries the connections in order from Connection 1 to Connection 3, so priority is inherently given to the first slot.