Blatman Posted February 17, 2023 Share Posted February 17, 2023 As always with homeplugs, it can be difficult to determine if the issue is the plugs or the electricity cables, especially where cables in ducting under gardens are concerned. Moisture, even condensation, can wreak havoc with the electrical signals passing along the wires. And of course it is natural to blame the "bought in" item rather than look more widely at cause and effect, especially if the solution is likely to be more or less impossible. With regards to speed, what is the upload speed supposed to be? Most domestic, and even many business lines, are deliberately asynchronous, so download speed is always much faster than upload. For purely domestic lines this prevents people running their own "publicly accessible" servers from home, and for business an asynchronous line is often less costly than a synchronous line where upload and download are the same speed. Wireless "mesh" can work well especially where wires are just not an option but can have their own idiosyncrasies. And just like wires, when they seem unreliable they are equally frustrating. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Blatman Posted February 17, 2023 Share Posted February 17, 2023 2 hours ago, XTR2Turbo said: I assume for the mesh to work the distance from house to garden room is quite short or do deco offer an outdoor unit ? And I forgot to mention, I have used Ubiquiti external point-to-point wifi (and you need two of these) a couple of times. Not cheap (which is why I did not think of them until now) but these are aimed at the small to medium business market. I am not a fan of much of what Ubiquiti does but these have proved to be very reliable. On one install, with line of sight across a 30 meter gap they were rock solid for more than 2 years without any input from anyone, and without the need to reboot. And they provided full connection speed that had a 100Mb leased line synchronous internet connection, so for me, in that application, they were well worth the expense. Certainly cheaper than digging trenches and adding cable ducting, which is pricy even if it's a DIY project. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Greenstreak-Andy D Posted February 22, 2023 Share Posted February 22, 2023 On 17/02/2023 at 08:00, XTR2Turbo said: I assume for the mesh to work the distance from house to garden room is quite short or do deco offer an outdoor unit ? Sorry, I missed this… Theres a few things to consider that may influence signal strength and reliability. My central Deco hardwired from the router is in the kitchen, central to house. The garden office is wooden construction. Straight line from kitchen to garden office is approximately 9.5m. The wifi signal passes mainly through double glazed windows from our home to the garden office. For me this system has increased upload speeds by 100% (but still a paltry 3.9Mbps) compared to plug in extenders. waiting patiently for the fibre to home roll out in 2025! Hope that helps Andy 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Blatman Posted February 22, 2023 Share Posted February 22, 2023 Glass is full of metal-like substances. 9.5 meters is quite a short distance so it'll work OK. Just because glass is clear doesn't mean it's invisible to radio signals 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pistonbroke Posted February 24, 2023 Share Posted February 24, 2023 On 09/01/2023 at 22:18, Blatman said: As others have said, TP Link homeplugs. One next to the router, and a wifi one in the office. Note the wifi ones also have RJ45 sockets on them so you get both wired and wireless in the office. I've used them for over a decade in some semi-professional scenarios and they work fine. I have three right now distributing an IP phone system at my parents house and although they are a few years old they are rock solid. I think I've had to reboot one of them in the last year. https://www.amazon.co.uk/TL-WPA4220KIT-Powerline-Broadband-Configuration-UK/dp/B01LXOZ4EN/ref=sr_1_2?crid=1C8H7D3ABA4WA&keywords=tp+link+homeplug&qid=1673302475&sprefix=tp+link+home%2Caps%2C67&sr=8-2 That's pretty much all you need. The small one next to the router, the large one in the office and as long as they can see each other over the mains, you're golden. Mine provide a solid 50Mb/s over an electrical system that is coming up for 40/50 years old. Newer systems may get closer to the full broadband speed but I'd be wary of claims of high speed when we start to look at full fibre speeds. For that sort of "high" speed pulling cables is definitely worth the extra effort, more for reliability and removing failure points as much as getting the fuill connection speed. Thought about using one of these to boost my wifi birdbox camera to router , which is OK in fine dry weather but anything damp in the atmosphere and it goes tits up (pardon the pun ) The problem is the shed where the camera is located is on a different ring circuit than the router so I believe this is a no no . I have tride the usual wifi booster but cant get the router to talk to the camera . Any ideas or suggestions ? Cheers IA . Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mark (smokey mow) Posted February 24, 2023 Author Share Posted February 24, 2023 35 minutes ago, pistonbroke said: The problem is the shed where the camera is located is on a different ring circuit than the router so I believe this is a no no . Mine are working on different circuits. I think the problems occur when their on different sides of a split board or where the outbuilding is separately earthed. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Blatman Posted February 27, 2023 Share Posted February 27, 2023 On 24/02/2023 at 17:33, pistonbroke said: Thought about using one of these to boost my wifi birdbox camera to router , which is OK in fine dry weather but anything damp in the atmosphere and it goes tits up (pardon the pun ) The problem is the shed where the camera is located is on a different ring circuit than the router so I believe this is a no no . I have tride the usual wifi booster but cant get the router to talk to the camera . Any ideas or suggestions ? Cheers IA . Tried one? Usually the typical wifi boosters are fitted in pairs, unless it was a wireless bridge which is not quite the same as a wifi booster, although in this context, that's a bit of semantics. Wifi bridges are usually a bit more difficult to set up as they are aimed at professional or semi professional installs. "Wifi boosters" are aimed at the general public. The plugs being on different rings might make a difference but I have definitely got one installation out there that is across two difference consumer boards and it runs fine. It's a tough one to diagnose why the camera wouldn't talk to the booster without having a bit more info like were there any error messages and if so what did they say? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pistonbroke Posted February 27, 2023 Share Posted February 27, 2023 4 hours ago, Blatman said: Tried one? Usually the typical wifi boosters are fitted in pairs, unless it was a wireless bridge which is not quite the same as a wifi booster, although in this context, that's a bit of semantics. Wifi bridges are usually a bit more difficult to set up as they are aimed at professional or semi professional installs. "Wifi boosters" are aimed at the general public. The plugs being on different rings might make a difference but I have definitely got one installation out there that is across two difference consumer boards and it runs fine. It's a tough one to diagnose why the camera wouldn't talk to the booster without having a bit more info like were there any error messages and if so what did they say? This is the one (or was , since it went to the skip some time ago )I gave up in sheer frustration trying to get a connection , the thought occured to me that it could have been faulty but I had no way to test if it was good or bad ( or me ) and that was after disposal . From what you have said previous I think I will try your suggestion , we use a consumer unit which has 2 ring main circuits 1 for indoors 1 for garage & O/S stuff similar to below https://www.amazon.co.uk/NETGEAR-Wi-Fi-Range-Extender-EX3700/dp/B00XYEPLXU/ref=asc_df_B00XYEPLXU/?tag=googshopuk-21&linkCode=df0&hvadid=226500799598&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=9922009538230464659&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9044983&hvtargid=pla-386070767486&psc=1&th=1&psc=1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Blatman Posted February 27, 2023 Share Posted February 27, 2023 Ok, those boosters are in fact wireless bridges. They need to connect to the "home wifi" and they will extend the range. Two things to bear in mind. 1. They need to receive a strong signal from the wifi router so they need to be in range* 2. Every wireless hop HALVES your bandwidth** *The further the wifi device is from the router, the slower it will be. I think these types of "wifi boosters" are inferior because they rely a bit on the person installing them to understand wireless at a bit of a higher level than most. Much better to try a couple of plugs as linked to in one of my previous posts. ** EVERY wireless device (router/phone/pc/tablet/range extender/access point etc etc) is in effect a HALF-DUPLEX two-way radio. In other words, when the device is transmitting, it (usually) can't receive. Clever electronics and dedicated chips ensure they don't "feel" that way, and I THINK (maybe/perhaps) a few professional grade devices can get around this by using different frequencies to send and receive allowing for limited simultaneous (full-duplex) communication BUT I'll stand to be corrected on that. On a consumer device I'm betting it's half-duplex. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pistonbroke Posted February 27, 2023 Share Posted February 27, 2023 Muchass greasyars (as they say in Wigan England ) for the informed reply ! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Blatman Posted February 28, 2023 Share Posted February 28, 2023 16 hours ago, pistonbroke said: Muchass greasyars (as they say in Wigan England ) for the informed reply ! You're lucky I stopped where I did. I could have gone on for quite a while Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pistonbroke Posted February 28, 2023 Share Posted February 28, 2023 52 minutes ago, Blatman said: You're lucky I stopped where I did. I could have gone on for quite a while FYI I believe it's "Simplex & Duplex" channels , at least that's what they used to call it in radio comms Simplex as in e.g. vhf ship to ship when we press the key to talk and say "Over " at the end of a message to invite a reply . With Duplex the conversation can be 2 ways simultanious . BTW. Looking at the TP-Link AV600 Powerline Kit , I don't see anything specific to suggest this will talk to a wifi camera Not sure how that would work ? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Blatman Posted February 28, 2023 Share Posted February 28, 2023 Wifi is wifi for the most part. The camera should talk to the TPLink no problem. Log in to the camera, choose the TPLink wifi, put in the wifi password and that should be it. I would usually say to set up the TPLink with the same wifi name as the router uses so that your devices can "roam" between the two without re-negotiating the connection, but in this case use whatever the default name is from the TPLink so that you know which wifi to joint the camera to. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Blatman Posted March 10, 2023 Share Posted March 10, 2023 On 15/02/2023 at 11:24, Scott Young (Captain Colonial) - Club Secretary said: Thanks, much appreciated 👍😊 Any update on this CaptaIn? I am curious how far TPLink went with the assistance they were offering... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Captain Colonial Posted March 10, 2023 Share Posted March 10, 2023 1 hour ago, Blatman said: Any update on this CaptaIn? I am curious how far TPLink went with the assistance they were offering... I’ve answered their email and given them the info they wanted, ie. network settings and IP addresses, results of a ping, network layout, serial numbers of the hardware, firmware version, etc. They responded just a few minutes ago with a link to a firmware update, which I will try next. To be fair, in each case they have responded quickly (within 24 hours), comprehensively and fairly. They do seem helpful and interested in sorting out the issue. I really can’t quibble about the service support. Fingers crossed about the firmware update, but I haven’t got my hopes up that it will work. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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