Dongle issue

Recently my GivEnergy dongle stopped communicating with my madam EAP -110 outdoor receiver 50cm from it. I tried resetting twice and also resetting the receiver though my phone can connect to the receiver from 50 metres away. Eventually I figured it was the dongle itself but its only 2 years old so I purchased a new one. Sadly this also didn't work. I contacted givenergy support and they are dragging their heels on an engineer visit so any help from anybody with a similar problem would be great. I did try plugging the dongle into my laptop and it does detect the receiver but can't connect. Is it the inverter connection??
Brendan

OMADA not madam

An engineer needs to install the dongle as part of the givenergy configuration includes the wifi dongle details.

Normally you will get your installation company to do that. GivEnergy rely on them to provide field engineering, they have very few engineers of their own

It might be worth checking your wifi setup as well. The givenergy dongle cannot connect if there is a 5GHz wifi network with the same network id. It only connects to a 2.4GHz network. Turn off the 5GHz then it should connect on your laptop. Once connected for the first time you can turn the 5GHz back on
But you still need an install engineer to fit the new dongle to your inverter

geoffreycoan you still need an install engineer to fit the new dongle to your inverter

Which is frankly ridiculous as the dongle is the item least likely to survive the warranty period....

Bossums So what does the controller see when the dongle tries to connect?

I can’t quite remember if you go to app>settings >setup Wi-Fi dongle and you can do it from there (or maybe that’s just if you change your Wi-Fi)
There is technically another way to do this but I’ll probably be shot for sharing it.

hoggy I don't think that associates a new dongle with the installation though, I think it just walks you through connecting the dongle to your wifi.

Vestas yeah I’ve never needed it so never run through it.

Might your OMADA device have received an over-the-air firmware update that stopped it working? If so, that isn't a problem a GivEnergy engineer could fix.

To test a dongle, you can use this android app.

First put the dongle into your inverter and let the blue light flash for a few minutes.

Acquire an android phone or tablet. Connect it to the internet and log into a google account. Download the app from the google play store (if necessary search for Givenergy to find the app). Turn off mobile data(if it's a device with a sim). Go near the inverter and change the wifi connection to the dongle (you should see the dongle serial number in the list of wifi points). You will need the password if one has been set on the dongle.

Run the app and enter the IP Address 10.10.100.254. Allow a few minutes for connection and the blue light on the dongle should stop flashing and the app will show data from the inverter. No internet required, in fact android will probably complain about internet not working.

Rubikcube OK - this was a brilliant suggestion, connected via the app and was able to see the data. However, still cannot get the dongle to connect with my home WiFi - think my next course of action is a TP-link or similar extender and see if that will work.

NiallKilleen Do you have a 5GHz wifi network as well as the 2.4GHz? Most modern routers provide both wifi networks with the same SSID. The GivEnergy dongles don’t like this and won’t connect. You have to turn the 5GHz off in your router, then let the inverter connect, and once connected for the first time you can then turn the 5 back on

geoffreycoan The EAP ones don't behave like that unless you specifically tell them to. Its more likely something on the encryption has changed - like making it WPA3 which the dongle can't handle.

NiallKilleen - the SSID security mode on the EAP is set to WPA/WPA2 yes? Also no load balancing or airtime fairness selected on the 2.4GHz radio? Edit - and also, obvious but easily missed, you're not using channel 13 are you because I'm fairly certain the dongle only works up to C11.

As an aside to geoffreycoan - what is actually happening on your mesh is that its set to kick all 2.4GHz clients the first time they connect to see if they'll connect to 5GHz. This is a fairly crude (but common) method of load balancing, both in terms of AP and band selection - the hope being that the client will switch band and/or stop clinging onto an AP which isn't the closest (hence using more airtime & reducing the PHY rate). Some older clients like the dongle give up and sulk rather than try a reconnect.

Most consumer mesh systems default to doing similar things as there's close to zero possibility of end-users setting a WLAN up properly, even if the controls were exposed to them. Eg - there's no end of crappily setup Unifi (Ubiquiti) WLANs because the end-users have no idea of the two basic design principles on WLANs - frequency and distance separation and rely on controls they don't understand to try and compensate. That and blasting out 2.4GHz on full power then wondering why clients won't connect to 5GHz.....

Once you have established that the dongle is working, you need to find out why it won't connect with your network. Two common reasons are frequency and encryption.

To check frequency, at your router/access point (temporarily) turn off all bands excepts 2.4GHz. No need to adjust the dongle, it's already 2.4GHz only!

To check the password/encryption, at you router/access point (again temporarily!) set to no encryption (hence no password). Then at the dongle rescan the network and see if it will connect without encryption.

Rubikcube He should be able to look at the EAP log and it'll show what (if anything) the client is doing in terms of connections/disconnections. If he's running an Omada controller then that'll give a lot more info but the EAP log is normally enough.