I have just changed isp and have a new router. Despite earlier suggestion on the community that the dongle is low power and will not interfere, due to it continuing to broadcast it is causing the wifi to drop continuously. This has been confirmed by removing the dongle from the inverter, and now no dropouts are ocurring. My questions are :-
1. Is there a dongle model available for the H1 Gen2 inverter that does not continue to broadcast after setup is completed?
2. If not, would replacing the wifi dongle with a LAN Smart Monitor L.3.0 connected to the router via a 2.4 Ghz only range extender with ethernet port, then Cat 5/6 ethernet cabled to the Smart monitor work? I would need to use this more complicated method of connection as I cannot cable direct. Any help much appreciated.
Have you actually paired your dongle to your new WiFi password?
It might be in higher power mode as it's actively searching, and scanning the channels.
It might be in higher power mode as it's actively searching, and scanning the channels.
Yes, paired up and working with Mobile app and Fox cloud for a few days before I disconnected it to confirm dongle was the problem.
Interference isn't the only cause of problems when it comes to WiFi, there can also be problems with clients that receive very low signal strength as well.
If the data logger barely receives the signal from the AP, this will cause the AP to also slow other clients down as well due to the way WiFi solves the problem of how to fairly share air time between clients connected, especially if it's dropping in and out a bit and there is a lot of packet re-transmission due to the AP or client missing packets.
Building construction is another factor as concrete/double brick will absorb more signal than weatherboard homes, metallic frames and metallic insulation may also be problematic and single vs double or even triple pane windows.
This can be a real pain in the butt for those wanting to do monitoring away from where they have their AP, and the best solution is to run an Ethernet cable and put an AP closer to the client.
From what I've read about WiFi only range extenders is that they can make the problem worst, as the cheap and nasty one's may only have 1 radio transceiver chip, so they broadcast on the same frequencies that they use for backhaul to another AP.
In the portal if you go to devices and click on the logger, what's the signal strength seem to be?
Mine's showing 3 out of 4 bars through multiple weatherboard walls and no more than 5m from the AP, although the API returns a value of 72 which I'm not sure if it means 72% or -72dBm or what exactly.
My AP is more helpful in giving actual strengths, in this case it's reporting the signal it's receiving as -64 dBm with the noise floor at -87 dBm. The noise floor is an indication of the interference from other things and if the data logger is almost that low the above problems occur.
Where as my laptop is much closer to the AP and it's reporting -36 dBm.
It's worth noting that dBm is not a linear scale, so while -64 dBm might seem like half that of -36 dBm, it's not. -36 dBm equals 0.000251 mW and -64 dBm equals 0.000000398 mW and -87 dBm is 0.000000002 mW.
I'd be very surprised if the data logger was causing interference just because it is also in AP mode, because AP mode with no clients connected only broadcasts beacons periodically for an infinitesimally small amount of time.
If there was a client connected and that client was sending or receiving as fast as supported then that can be a source of interference.
Fox uses a chip that supports WiFi 4, 802.11n, in their data loggers but a quick search brought up posts saying it will fall back to WiFi 3, 802.11g, so that could be another problem and by putting it on a different AP would stop it from effecting other WiFi clients on the current AP.
Many thanks evilbunny. I understand bits of your reply, but some is beyond my tech knowledge. No one has commented on my alternative solution using the wired L3.0 dongle connected via ethernet and deicated wifi extender.
Yes there is a smart Lan available for the H1 G2, a lot of users move to this to avoid the inevitable problems that occur over time with broadband changes etc.. - a full datalogger compatibility chart is listed here for the various inverter modesl https://fox-ess.tech/datalogger-wifi-la ... atibility/
That is basically a twist on the solution I suggested.
It's just a matter of which is cheapest if price is a factor.
A cheap AP would be simpler since you already have the WiFi dongle on your inverter and it only has to be close to the data logger, a LAN dongle needs cable run all the way to the inverter and Ethernet cable suitable for outdoors cost more than indoor cable.
Thanks evilbunny and Dave F, will try extender next to router W4 dongle first, and if that does not work use lan dongle via dedicated wifi extender (2.4Ghz only)
Finally remembered where I saw it, some people have improved signal with an antenna upgrade
https://whrl.pl/RgTlirWiFi Antenna Upgrade
Not a new product but a useful upgrade: purchasing a 12 dBi SMA male antenna from AliExpress dramatically improved WiFi connection strength from no bars to 2 bars, eliminating the need for WiFi extenders (AnkerEde, p250).
Thanks all. Problem sorted by setting up 2.4 Ghz wifi extender close to inverter dongle. Used TP-Link TL-WA850RE 300Mbps. Nice cheap solution!