This Cam OG is at a remote location. It uses a neighbor’s Wifi (with his permission, of course). Recently the neighbor needed to redo their network, and they selected a different name for it. Is there a way for me to select the new network without having to be on site to do so?
No
But if the neighbor is willing to set the old Wifi name and password to the new equipment it should start working again.
Duly noted but probably not happening. I didn’t think I could set it up remotely but I figured I’d give this forum a try to see if there was something I did not know.
Maybe ask if they can temporarily enable a guest network with the old name and password, until you’re able to go there and switch it? They can even isolate that guest network from their main one - which actually is how they should be doing it anyway, from a security best practices standpoint.
Obviously assumes their router supports guest network, but that isn’t uncommon these days.
Thanks for the suggestion, but the network name was preset by the vendor of the Wifi broadcast hardware, and the neighbor is not tech savvy. I suppose it will just have to wait until I can drive the 30 miles to set it back up. We were planning to be up there this coming weekend anyway.
Well, as you have already heard, there’s no easy change to WiFi name/pass. I try to play a long game. Maybe you are not interested, but what I would do is.
- Pickup another router for your network. Plug it in with Ethernet to your main router(s). Bring it up using his new WiFi name/password. Now, either take another of your cams, or ask him to mail that one to you. Set it up using this (your own) mirror of his network. If he mailed, it now mail it back. If you used one your others, mail it and ask him to mail you the first.
Yes, this is extra work. Its the long game and allows you a method to do it again. And of course, if you do set this up, the Universe will automatically prevent it from happening again, just to waste your time.
Oh yeah, once done, you turn off this mirrored router, you only need it for this project.
That’s an interesting approach but unnecessary. The cams are only 30 miles away at our house in the mountains. I miss my porch cam up there, which doubles as a wildlife cam.
Last week we had a bear come through the yard which is frequently filled with other fauna. I posted a video of the bear elsewhere in this forum. Wyze’s detection algorithm called it a “pet”.
I just need to get up there and reinstall the cameras. It’s a unique set up. The neighbor is my brother who lives at the other end of the farm. It’s so rural that there is no cell service. There’s about 1/4 mile between us, but he has Starlink and broadcasts Wifi from an omnidirectional antenna on his roof so he has access around the farm.
I picked up a Wifi antenna and signal amp and have propped up and pointing out a 2nd floor window at my brother’s house 1/4 mile away. I get about 30 megs on a good day which compares the the telco’s “DSL” amounting to 0.5 to 1.0 megs - almost as bad as dialup.
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Reminds of the time when someone asked where he could get a cheap Wi-Fi for a device that had problems connecting to his main router. At that time, even Wi-Fi extenders were not cheap.
He happened to have a raspberry pi3 lying around unused. I emailed him instructions on how to install software on the pi to turn it into a Wi-Fi device.
1/4 mile on an omni is very good, one of the benefits of being rural with little interference.
Depending on what his omni antenna setup is (single or dual, 2.4ghz or 5ghz) you could look at the TP link directional APs like the CPE210 and CPE510. That amp is probably just hurting you, likely one of the TP Link units connected to your router or AP would give you a much more stable signal and probably more speed. The distance is pretty far for 5ghz (the CPE510) so more likely the CPE210 would be the one to go for. They’re pretty reasonably priced.
Or if you wanted a really fast link, a pair of CPE710s (one on either side) would give you one heck of a link, but I’m guessing that’s overkill.
Though I’m a bit confused now, why do you need to change the camera, isn’t it connected to your own wifi which then links to his, or are you using a repeater for his network? If so, the repeater is cutting your speed in half, so the setup above would be even more beneficial if that’s the case. May be able to put the repeater in AP mode and connect it to the TP link.
I may have misspoke when I mentioned an amplifier. I just assumed that’s what’s hanging off the little dish. This is the system I purchased…
It works like a charm and provides Wifi to my house at nearly the same speed I’d get on my phone if I was standing down in my brother’s front yard, so I can’t imagine being able to do anything to improve my speed.
The network to which I connect is the one broadcast from 1/4 mile away. It is the only Wifi in my house. All my devices connect directly to it.
OK it is basically a repeater hanging off a highly directional antenna. If it works well, no need to do anything different.
Works like a charm. I went from a horribly painful less than 1 Mps DSL to 30 Mps for free (thanks to my brother’s need to broadcast Wifi around the farm)! I’m like a pig in slop! 
And that’s through trees and a window (yes, it’s a light pole for a mast. It works)
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I could definitely recommend a cheaper and better setup but hey, you already have it, it works, that’s all that matters.
Hard to imagine anything better considering I’m getting Wifi from 1/4 mile away that’s as good as what I get with my phone at the site of origin.
I’m still curious. What would you have recommended?
A TP Link or Ubiquiti directional unit, ideally mounted outside the window but not required, feeding a standard router or AP sitting inside. Could be done for under $100, you could connect wired devices as well as wireless, have segmentation of the networks, and if he ever changes the network or password, you just update the directional unit and your devices don’t know anything has changed. That setup also gives you potentially double the bandwidth since it isn’t acting as a repeater.
You’ve convinced me that I spent too much on the hardware, but I still fail to see how it’s possible to get more bandwidth from the connection remotely than I can get directly right at the source. How can this rig get more bandwidth than the Wifi is actually putting out?
The setup appears to be a repeater, which means it is cutting bandwidth in half. That highly directional antenna is getting a much better signal than other devices so in theory it could probably do 60 megs if it wasn’t running as a repeater and was running as a point to point link plus a separate access point.
Of course if the 30 meg limit is actually on the internet side and not the wifi side, then that wouldn’t actually make any difference (other than for LAN usage).
Not saying anything is wrong with what you have, just tossing it out there in case you do something similar somewhere else or someone else reading wants to do something like it. A dedicated “wireless backhaul” portion and “wireless LAN” portion will give better performance and more flexible, that’s all.
Perhaps that’s not a repeater you see. I assumed it was a signal amplifier, but I can’t say for certain.
The reason I suspect such is because, as I’ve noted numerous times, I can often get the same bandwidth remotely as I get connecting directly to the Wifi at the source with my phone.
If you’re using the same network name on your devices as his network, it is a repeater, wifi amplifiers haven’t been common for many years.
The antenna on your phone is nowhere near as focused and powerful as that setup. However, like I said, if his internet speed is less than 1/2 of the wifi speed, you won’t notice the difference unless you’re trying to do local file transfers (no internet involved).