No, he or she said their power line extender is already working fine and other WiFi devices are using it successfully at that location. Do you have a theory as to why the smart plug is not one of them?
Is this a Wyze indoor plug or the Wyze outdoor plug that is not connecting to the WiFi?
Thanks for all the suggestions!! I will bring you all some follow up answers this weekend. Life is kind of getting in the way but I’ll have dons time on Saturday for an update. Thanks again for all your contributions to this little mystery!
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I set it up in the shop to start with.
I spent last Saturday verifying that the neutral and hot had not been reversed and that my ground was correct. My VOM shows 117 V when measuring from hot to ground and from hot to neutral and 0 V from neutral to ground, so all looks good there.
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Redbadger: Interesting that you mentioned that. Initially I did have the Power Extender on the wrong phase (hot and neutral were reversed) and had to reverse it on the main breaker in the house. However, before I did that the Power Extender did not work at all. Now it works fine and I get about 4-10 Mb/sec. Of course the home speed test is much higher, roughly 75 Mb/sec but I would expect a loss at 75 yards from the house. Also, the other Wyze device connects fine (outdoor Cam). I do have a sub-panel in the shop and I have verified that the hot and neutral at the plug is correct and not reversed. I have also verified that my ground is working appropriately. There is no meter at the shop.
This is a Wyze indoor plug.
I would have thought it would have increased your speed test more, but ??
My shop is about the same distance from house. Prior to setting up the powerline extender, my speed test was,
Ping : little to none
Download : 4-5 Mbps
Upload : 0 Mbps
After powerline extender was installed and working in the shop
Ping : 50-55ms
Download : 55-60 Mbps
Upload 12-13 Mbps
This speed test results is almost equal to the speed test inside my house
Actually speed test increased in the house after installing the powerline extender
I had great results with the unit.
Observation: Wyze Plugs have flimsy ability to find/maintain/re-establish connectivity. Every time there is any “hiccup” in my network, anywhere, they disconnect and require removing and re-establishing.
Just a few thoughts off the top of my head…
1.) Take the plug inside the main house, connect it to wi-fi there, and verify latest firmware is installed. I had trouble with a plug with old firmware not connecting to a specific router. I had to connect it to a different router to do the firmware update, then it was able to connect to the original router.
2.) Could the powerline extender frequencies (traveling over the power lines) be interfering with the plug’s wi-fi reception?
3.) Could there be another source of RF interference in the area or causing noise on your power lines?
4.) Position a cell phone or tablet connected to the same SSID so it is physically close to the outlet you are using. Start watching a video or run a speed test and see if the phone or tablet has a poor connection when it is located near that outlet you are using.
Rocker 60
I haven’t had that issue, loosing connection, since I installed the Powerline extender
Prior I had more issues with some SmartThings products I have, than the Wyze products
Only Wyze product I have issues with now is the Wyze thermostat and that’s not because of WiFi connection it’s all firmware issues, they don’t seem to care about resolving
I think they do care. I have a powerline system as well, and we may be finding (you and I) that causes interference. Hmmm.
Wyze suggested I change the channel on my 2.4 GHz channel and see if that helps. I will try. If not, I think I’ll call them a loss and trash them.
Ok, this is the latest observations although not very helpful:
First of all I took a brand new plug and set it up in the house with the house’s WI-FI network. All worked fine. I then deleted the plug from my account an attempted to set it up inside my shop 75 yards away. To refresh, I am using a powerline extender with its own SS ID. I have one outlet outside the shop and four outlets inside the shop. When I attempt to set up the plug inside the shop it actually connects!! However, when I attempt to set up on the Outlet outside the shop it not only does not set up but it also deactivate my Wi-Fi. This is probably the actual problem as without Wi-Fi you can’t set up a plug. So the actual problem is connecting this wireless plug to the outside outlet interferes with the power extender and therefore disconnects the Wi-Fi network.
Now, a couple more details I have tried two different extension cords and with either extension cord (one is probably 25 feet and another is probably 6 feet. The 25 foot one has a ground and the 6 foot one does not and I had to use an adapter. The longer cord is probably 12 gauge and the shorter cord is probably 14 gauge) I can successfully connect the plug to the outside outlet. As soon as I remove the Extension cord and the plug will not connect the Wi-Fi crashes. I have verified that the voltage coming directly from the outlet is 117 V between the Hot and the ground and 117 V between the hot and neutral and that the polarity has not been reversed.
The only possible explanation (or at least consideration) is that when I wired the Shop the outside outlet was an afterthought and is actually in line before the shop’s sub panel. In other words turning off the circuits at the shop’s sub panel does not turn off this outlet. I have to do that at the main panel in the house. That’s the only thing that is different between the outlets that are inside the shop versus the outlet that is outside the shop.
Not sure what else I can try. Just to summarize I have tried the following:
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Used a brand new plug with the same behavior.
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Verified polarity, voltage and ground is correctly wired.
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Tried different length extension cords.
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Identified that the problem only exists from one Outlet outside the shop that is not wired to the subpanel in the shop.
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Identified that attempting to set up the plug will crash the power extender Wi-Fi.
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It doesn’t matter if the Outlet is grounded or not.
I really appreciate all your help. Any further suggestions I’m more than happy to see if they work. Thanks!
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just out of curriosity…set a plug up in the house again…
change the extender so it has the same wifi as the house…proceed to plug everything in at the shop as needed… ( note for added realism wear old timey clothes and beard, charles darwin esque, they wont help, but it will make you smile while doing all this)
note results…
if you cant tell…im running out of ideas and slightly at a loss…this is rather perplexing
So you’ve really figured this out then (in bold). The Wyze plug is for some reason whacking (technical term) your power line adapter signal.
Thank you for the update.
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Not sure I would say that I figured it out. That would imply I had a fix. I have only further defined the behavior.
I did have something that happened after I posted last which may be interesting…When I put the shorter 6 foot extension between the Wyze plug and the outlet, at first it worked. I went back a little later and replugged it in and it crashed the WIFI. In fact, it completely screwed up the Power Extender to a point that I had to restore it back to factory settings and reinstall it. So, It does seem to have something to do with the length of the extension cord. I didn’t have a chance to stretch out the 25 foot cord to see if it would still work. Right now it is coiled up and everything is working fine. I guess that is how I will have to use it, which is a shame since it looks kind of ridiculous having the extension cord wound up attached to a plug (plus I want the cord back for other uses:)) by my shop door.
So it appears the “antenna” theory is mostly dead. But the new theory is that the additional length from the extension cord is sufficient to isolate the extender receiver from the interference introduced by the Wyze plug?
The problem with the corollary “whacking” theory, though, is I think you said in the original description that the other extender dependent devices DID keep working even as the smart plug failed?
Correct. I do have a Wyze Cam Outdoor that works fine 6 feet away. However, I am not sure if the base station connects to the WIFI at the house rather than the WIFI from the power extender since the base station is acting like an access point. I will check this when I get home.
As to your other point about the antenna…I’m not sure it is dead since it does have something to do with the length of the extension cord: I have tried a small 3 to 2 plug adapter, a 6 foot (no ground) extension and a 25 foot grounded extension. The small adapter didn’t work. the 6 foot worked at first and then crashed and the 25 foot works fine. Couldn’t this still be an antenna effect? I don’t know enough of about “antenna” theory to even speculate how the longer extension cord would allow thisWyze plug to work 6 feet away from the power extender vs a Wyze plug inside the shop at 4 feet away works fine though. AHHHHHRRRG!
Actually I was picturing the low power disrupting signal from the smart plug dissipating sufficiently with the longer cable so as not to disturb the power line extender signal. So the length would still matter. All wild guessing of course.