Help getting set up

[Awehner75]

Greetings all, and thanks in advance for your help.

I'm trying to install room assistant on a raspberry pi zero w. I was able to accomplish all steps up to installing NodeJS. Whenever I try to SSH in, I'm met with either a "timed out" error, or on occasion when I do get in, I get a "network error: software cause connection abort" error. I've tried with both Putty and Mobaxterm. Same results with both. I've updated everything, and even tried disabling the wifi and connecting with ethernet. Same results. I've tried using the keepalives feature, with no luck. I've been at this for several days now and am starting to get a bit frustrated. Sometimes it will work, sometimes it wont, and when it does work its not for long. Additionally, i've noticed that when using ifconfig, i'll be able to see the ip address, then literally 2 seconds later if I try again, it's gone. Then most recently, after I added the ethernet, it started showing two different ip addresses. I thank you for any assistance that you can provide, it is appreciated more than you know.