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0 pointsssl-31y ago0 comments

I hear a lot about reliability issues with various wifi smart devices.

I've had perfectly lovely reliability with wifi smart devices in my mixture of zigbee/wifi at home, such that I don't really have a preference. Except for one cheap ESP8266-based wifi relay module that had some liquid damage (not the module's fault), and the LED driver in my very first RGBW light bulb finding death after being used for a few years (a common-enough tale regardless of connectivity choice), they seem to Just Work.

It's all semi-random brands of devices, bought over time.

I'm not doing anything particularly fancy with the network itself: It's just a couple of hardwired dual-band Mikrotik access points, with one upstairs at the back of the house and one downstairs at the front of the house (perhaps non-obviously, on non-overlapping channels). A Pi 4 with OpenWRT quietly does the packet-slinging.

Like in many other places, the 2.4GHz band is approximately ruined where I live these days. It's noisy and slow. But it all works well enough to reliably toggle a relay on or off, at least.

Am I just lucky? Are others just unlucky? Or is there an actual pattern here?

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nucleardog1y ago

I’ve tried a handful of WiFi light bulbs, smart plugs, and other things. They were connected to a dedicated 2.4GHz access point (MikroTik as well). WiFi signal was fine—had good coverage (access point was central to the small wood frame house, and checking signal strength at device locations showed a great signal) and I live in the middle of a forest and there’s nothing else within range to interfere. Basically best case scenario outside of a lab or something.

I haven’t had a single device that worked reliably. Some worked fairly consistently, but only after a long (and variable) delay. Many others failed to work often enough that, combined with the delays, the workarounds became the normal way of using things.

At this point I’m running basically everything over Z-Wave (via Home Assistant) and it’s been rock solid for me. Especially with the ability to set up direct associations, things like “this dimmer’s state should be synchronized to that dimmer” are very responsive and reliable, not involving my controller or Home Assistant at all.

Hard to say whether you’re lucky or I’m unlucky—most people having a good experience aren’t going to take to the internet to start a crusade about it—but I do occasionally see someone recommending or saying that Z-Wave or Zigbee has been reliable for them… I think yours is the first I’ve read where someone’s been happy with WiFi.

ssl-3OP1y ago

Why sure. It's a rule that people who have the least amount of success with a thing will write the most about that thing. This is why those with their wits about them read things like Amazon reviews with a decent-sized grain of salt.

And yes, you're describing a very quiet environment in terms of outside interference. I'm seriously a little bit envious of that.

One thing that I am doing differently than what you were doing is this: I'm not isolating my smart-widgets to their own wifi access point, as I suspect most people also are not (since "most people" just have a single access point/all-in-one router for everything).

I built my little wifi network to have what I feel is good coverage in and around the whole house, with the intent that all devices (dozens of them) would use that same wifi SSID.

As an unintentional result of this combined network, if/when there's a problem with the do-all wireless network, I'm pretty likely to notice right away because things like my phone and my laptop won't work like they did yesterday.

And wifi problems have happened for me: For instance, before I went 100% Mikrotik, I was using an old once-fancy Asus router with third-party firmware as a combination of access point and switch for part of the house. It became increasingly unreliable as the years ticked on for whatever reason, and always came back to life after a quick reboot, but it eventually would turn stupid again anyway.

And whilst it was being stupid, various things would indeed break: The lights wouldn't turn on/off, or I'd see that my phone was using cellular data instead of wifi, or I'd say "Hey Google" and get "I can't connect to your Wifi" as a response. Madness, insanity. (And then I'd go unplug that router-shaped Asus access point for a few seconds, plug it back in, and things would be fine after a few minutes -- every time.)

But I have not at any time blamed the smart end-point devices (the wifi light bulbs, the switched outlets, the whatevers) for what was clearly -- in my case -- an infrastructure problem. (And having a particular old Asus router-box turn funky isn't indicative of a wifi-specific problem, either -- it's just indicative that this hardware had become increasingly broken over time.)

nucleardog1y ago

I have two identical Mikrotik devices bolted to a wall beside each other in a closet. One is the WAP serving all of our phones, the laptop I use for work, the laptop my wife uses for work, the TV, the PC hooked to the TV, and everything else. It’s been 100% rock solid.

So my initial assumption is definitely going to be that the nearly identical setup except only serving a handful of low bandwidth devices is going to be just as solid.

That would seem to be a safe assumption given I’ve no noticeable missing data points from the $700 German air quality sensor that I’ve been recording for years and is connected via that access point. It’s moved to various rooms and points throughout the house as demand dictated without issue.

It would seem to be the case given I can pull up a feed from the WiFi IP camera I hooked up and pull it continuously with no latency or dropped frames whenever I want.

If I have an infrastructure issue, it’s one that is curiously selective about cheap IoT hardware while ignoring whatever other random stuff I hook up.

After a decade of installing MikroTik networks in hotels, condo buildings, and office buildings supporting all manner of nonsense you can take my word that there is a strong, reliable, WiFi network connection available at any point inside my house… or you’re welcome to come by with whatever diagnostic gear you’d like and tell me how it’s broken. I’d love to be able to make good use of some of that wifi IoT stuff!

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nucleardog1y ago

ssl-3OP1y ago

And yes, you're describing a very quiet environment in terms of outside interference. I'm seriously a little bit envious of that.

I built my little wifi network to have what I feel is good coverage in and around the whole house, with the intent that all devices (dozens of them) would use that same wifi SSID.

nucleardog1y ago

So my initial assumption is definitely going to be that the nearly identical setup except only serving a handful of low bandwidth devices is going to be just as solid.

It would seem to be the case given I can pull up a feed from the WiFi IP camera I hooked up and pull it continuously with no latency or dropped frames whenever I want.

If I have an infrastructure issue, it’s one that is curiously selective about cheap IoT hardware while ignoring whatever other random stuff I hook up.

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