Dongle router connection issue

Hello, I wonder if anyone can help. I have a solar array (with i-boost for the hot water) and a solar edge inverter, installed about 6 years ago. Last year I bought an EV (Niro) and had a zappi wall box installed. Earlier this year I had a GivEnergy 9.5 kW battery installed. All has been well until I upgraded my internet package including a new router (Zyxel). The solar edge inverter and zappi link to the new router but the GivEnergy dongle does not. My battery installer has tried several things. The router has been set to 2.4G (rather than 5) and the firewall switched off and still the dongle will not link to the router. I was told that the dongle requires access to port 7654 but someone at my internet provider (Shell) said that this port is not available with the ZyXEL router. At the moment I cannot access the battery app am going round in circles trying to solve this. Any suggestions would be most welcome.

Don't switch off the router firewall. This is there to protect you from the internet.
Have you downloaded the WIFI dongle docs from GivEnergy?
Try this one for starters
https://kb.givenergy.cloud/article.php?id=1

Also note that the GivEnergy WIFI dongle can't see UK WIFI channels 12 and 13.

alan_johnston

alan_johnston Thank you for your reply. I was given the dongle doc by GivEnergy. The problem was I could not maintain a stable connection to the dongle to change the settings. Neither vould my installer.

Dictyocha I think you can plug the dongle into a computer and access the settings that way? Maybe. If I've remembered correctly. 🤣

TX200 I tried that but it didn't work

Dictyocha Good morning,
Just read your post. We have a similar system, except 2 5Kw batteries. The Dongle on top of the inverter is quite happy talking to the Devolo range extender, which is fitted in the garage loft.
Our router is a TP-Link, the extension uses 2.4G to connect to the Dongle and then to the rest of our Network.
It’s been working fine since installed in March this year.
Not sure if you’ve tried actually connecting your Dongle to the network or your installer as it can be a bit of a faff.
I suggest you down load the installation instructions from the GivEnergy website and work through them.
If at first you don’t succeed try again!
The dongle and the router are only about 4 meters apart within the garage. The router is in the middle of our house attached to the garage. Hope the is helps.

Xeroid Kid Thank you for your comments. My installer has spoken to GivEnergy and tried several options but has run out of ideas. We did set up a hotspot on my phone and that linked to the dongle for about 40 minutes and has now failed. The solar edge and Givenergy inverters are side by side about 3 feet from the router.

Dictyocha
That is strange, I assume you pressed the small reset dongle button on the end of the Dongle. (Under the rubber bung)
Using your phone as an extension might not be the best idea, but then again if the router is so close to your inverter then you shouldn’t have any problems keeping the dongle connected.
You said that you used the 2.5G that’s correct.
Now I don’t want to tell you how to suck eggs but I find that I used my iPad to set the Dongle up, I can’t do with the small screen. Perhaps it’s possible to miss out selecting something when you need to scroll down the page to select an action like [save] I remember running through the setup several times before you achieve your goal.
It did make me wonder how the installer coped when he did every thing on his phone. What a ‘pain in the neck’ I should have paid more attention. I thought I was doing the right think not getting in the way.
Breaking it down in small chunks.
The Dongles internal light keeps flashing this allows you log onto the Dongle and connecting to it’s network. E.g. 10.10.254.10 ‘say’
Then once you are on the dongle network you take over, and control the dongle to join your home network.
Dongle checks all the available WiFi’s in the area and produces a list of what’s available and what signal strength.
Check the box that’s the highest wifi signal from your router and save your settings.
Light should now stop flashing and should go solid blue.
If your not successful keep us posted I’ll dig out my notes, they can be a bit tricky.
Regards,
Dave.

I have had a similar problem with my GivEnergy system (inverter and battery) installed 2 months ago. The system works fine but I could not get Local Monitoring to work on my phone or tablet. Contact with GivEnergy technical advised that the dongle and the monitoring phone etc. MUST be connected to exactly the same wifi access point, so mesh systems (and wifi extenders) usually will not work. In trying to reconfigure my wifi system this morning I lost contact with the dongle which started slow blue flashing. My installer provided the dongle set-up procedure, but that still didn't work. A phone call to GivEnergy suggested that I would need to reset the dongle first (by pressing for several seconds the button under the rubber bung in the bottom of the dongle), and then waiting for several minutes before starting the set-up procedure again.

It took several goes, but eventually succeeded. I found that you need to follow the set-up instructions very carefully and be very patient .. some of the stages seem to take several minutes before taking effect (and in a couple of instances there was no indication that the stage was complete so I had to take a chance and move on ... which is why tit took several goes!)

The dongle is now linked directly to my router (rather than via the mesh system), and local monitoring is working on my phone provided it is also linked directly to the router.

Thanks for your replies. I have tried again. Manage to follow the GivEnergy guide part way through when the link to the dongle dropped out. Since then I can only link to the dongle for maybe a minute before it drops out. No idea why. Any suggestions would be welcome.

The instruction book suggests that you can plug the dongle in directly to a computer. That would bring the dongle very close to the computer, and would eliminate any power supply or signal strength issues. Once you have set up the dongle, you can put it back on the inverter/battery, where it will at least retain its proper set-up.