Home AMX User Forum AMX General Discussion

Wi-Spy reading....

Anyone good with Wi-Spy readings? This is the house I'm in that I'm getting horrible reception on the MVP-5200. The first reading is without any access points or Zigbee gateways in the house hooked up. The second has our channel 1, 11 and Zigbee 26 stuff.

Anyone think this could be the culprit of poor reception of the 5200 and one particular panel falling offline every 20 minutes?

Suggestions would be great.

Comments

  • viningvining Posts: 4,368
    Well the 2nd pic still shows what looks like an AP on channel 6. It's dead on channel 6 and about the same bandwidth as the other pic so that is worth investigating. You don't have neighbors nearby or anything, mybe another WAP in the house acting as a repeater or bridge?

    This has got me thinking abuot a 5200i on one of my jobs. It always acted weird and had a hard time connecting but the customers still haven't moved in yet so it's been on the back burner. I couldn't do a firware update over the ethernet and had to resort to the USB transfer which is a little odd with the new IP over USB set up but any way I finally did the transfer and it started acting a little better. It almost got sent back for replacement but I gave it another chance but it too has been dropping off repeatedly so maybe it something in the firmware that affects their abiltiy to attach themselve to a certain WAP channel. Have you tried changing the channel on the WAP nearest it? Also I would try the new firware update that is supposed to increase its range. It might just fix a bug that hasn't been disclosed.
  • jjamesjjames Posts: 2,908
    Yeah - the WAP on 6 is not ours. Definitely a neighbor's WAP - but not sure which - and actually am surprised that Wi-Spy is picking it up; no panel or computer can pick it up though (even using NetStumbler). We specifically put our access points on 1 and 11 because of that rogue WAP on

    BTW - this is also the job where the 8400 drops off every 20 minutes, which is connected to channel 1; there are two panels connected to WAP 1 and only one falls offline; only the 5200 is connected to channel 11.

    I saw that xbox 360s send off some whacky 2.4ghz stuff even when powered off - and I thought that was going to be the ticket . . . but apparently now. :( So sad....
  • I'm assuming this is with v. 2.60.64 that has: Improvements on wireless rate negotiation has increased wireless range and stability?

    Kevin D.
  • jjamesjjames Posts: 2,908
    Yup. How'd you guess?

    But I'm just curious - is this much "noise" normal?
  • Spire_JeffSpire_Jeff Posts: 1,917
    It looks a little noisy on first glance. I will pop in my wi-spy tomorrow at the office and see what my scan shows. The thing that concerns me a little is the traffic that looked like it was on channels 8 and 9.

    Jeff
  • a_riot42a_riot42 Posts: 1,624
    jjames wrote: »
    Anyone think this could be the culprit of poor reception of the 5200 and one particular panel falling offline every 20 minutes?

    Suggestions would be great.

    Are you sending text or other data from inside define_program?
    Paul
  • jjamesjjames Posts: 2,908
    No - not in define_program. I do send it text when the XM receives any song data, but that's only when it's on the source.

    Here's what's aggravating - I checked yesterday's log: hasn't fallen offline. I had powered off the Cisco WAP to do that first reading without any WAPs . . . and it's all good now. WAP problem and nothing to do with this apparently noisy place? Grrr - talk about an aggravating problem.
  • ericmedleyericmedley Posts: 4,177
    From what I can see you have some kind of non-network transmitter on WIFI channel 9. It's the very straight spike. Also, something in the area is FHSS on the lower 6 channels. It is crusing in at about 60db or so. Not horrible but enough to cause some flakiness.

    We normally don't see quite that much noise. Where is this place?
  • jjamesjjames Posts: 2,908
    Thanks for the reply Eric.

    It's just a residence on the water. Nothing special. In order to have internet, the client had to get something called YHTI - Your Hometown Internet - which is essentially a couple of giant access point on steroids around the lake and the signal is shot from a tower - but needs to be line of sight. I haven't a clue if that has anything to do with it but (probably not) but . . . I dunno.

    It's been solid for a while and just now am noticing some problems after putting in the second access point (on channel 11) and the Zigbee (channel 26 - the spike to the far right.) So I'm not sure if the problems have always existed (surely the client would notice a panel falling offline every 20 minutes though!) or if these are new.

    Either way - need to get this figured out by next week!! My wife is due then and the client will be here!
  • DHawthorneDHawthorne Posts: 4,584
    jjames wrote: »
    Thanks for the reply Eric.

    It's just a residence on the water.

    I have seen a lot of RF flakiness on waterfront sites, especially salt water (ocean). Back when we still did alarms, I had a client with a glass break sensor where the indicator light was on all the time ... it tripped normally, but the stupid LED would not shut off. Yet, if I simply shielded it with my hand, off it would go. Multiple new ones did exactly the same, and I concluded the nearby ocean was doing something funky. There was no direct sunlight or any other reasonable culprit. Same house, I could not find a cordless phone that worked more than one room away from the base (and of course, the owner want to use his cordless like a cell phone, though this was long before cell phones became as popular as they are now ... I was still using a beeper at the time). The only think I could think of (not being an expert on such things) was that the dissolved minerals, etc., in the water cause weird reflections of RF signals.
  • jjamesjjames Posts: 2,908
    No salt water here - just here. The house is on a point (kinda), and the neighbors are about 100+ feet away from this house. Could it be "dirty" power coming into the house? Surely that couldn't do anything - could it?
  • Spire_JeffSpire_Jeff Posts: 1,917
    I have had some BIG problems with dirty power. The problem was that on average, 3-5 times per hour, the voltage would drop to 0 for a split second. I figured this out by logging voltage changes using a Tripplite UPS. It also presented as a frequency drop when the voltage would drop. The drops were normally not even noticeable to the naked eye, but constant processor and computer lockups were fixed by adding a battery backup/power conditioner. Also, after only a few months, various pumps and motors started to fail.

    The power company came out and analyzed the power, but BIG SHOCKER!, everything was working "within documented standards". These standards allow for a LOT of problems that don't make modern electrical equipment happy. This is why we now spec a minimum of a battery backup with EVERY processor. This also helps with cable and satellite box lockup problems (to some degree).

    I did run my older version Wi-Spy at the office this morning and the environment was much quieter than your scan and I am located next to an airport and there are no less than 3 APs within range from neighbors. Do they have panasonic wireless phones in use? If so, are the base/cell stations a good distance from the APs? if not, see if you can move them further away from each other.

    Jeff
  • jjamesjjames Posts: 2,908
    Spire_Jeff wrote: »
    I did run my older version Wi-Spy at the office this morning and the environment was much quieter than your scan and I am located next to an airport and there are no less than 3 APs within range from neighbors. Do they have panasonic wireless phones in use? If so, are the base/cell stations a good distance from the APs? if not, see if you can move them further away from each other.

    Yes, but they're running on 5.8ghz. I unplugged the base at one point, did another scan with no difference.

    I'm starting to think it may be a WAP problem. (I really should have this thread merged with the other one of TP online/offline every 20 minutes.) Yesterday I took the WAPS down to do the initial scan, and then put them back up. Didn't have any problems for the rest of the day, nothing losing connection, and was just smooth sailing from there. This morning I come back and now the panel is dropping every 60 minutes. The only thing that I did really before I left was take down all the WAPs. I now have a different touch panel in it's place. We'll see if this one falls offline!
Sign In or Register to comment.