Someone nearby has setup yet another new wifi network and now the 2.4GHz band is so congested the inverter dongle has trouble connecting to my router and so the inverter goes offline for long periods. 🙁
Is there a newer dongle that will work with a Gen1 inverter and use the 5GHz WIFI band?
I am afraid not as far as I know the Givenergy Inverters/dongles will only work 2.4gHz with no upgrade to 5gHz available.
Is it possible with your setup to install a hard Lan line connection to your router as a workaround?
Hook Was hoping not to have to install a wifi repeater right next to the inverter but that might be the only option. Not sure what the new WIFI network is using but it has got some serious transmit power. Using a WIFI analyzer, when the new WIFI network was detected, it registered at -30dBm. My router is only -50dBm when I am right next to it. I'm not surprised the inverter lost connection.
Have you checked which channels are in use nearby for other networks and changing the channel to whichever of channels 1, 6, 11 has the fewest/least powerful networks? Channels outside of those will overlap and interfere with neighbours. It is likely that you have tried this if you are measuring signal strength, but it will be the simplest and cheapest solution if you can just move away from the channel your neighbour's powerful router is using.
My Inverter gear is in a garage where the normal wifi signal was a bit marginal.
However, I did have a wired LAN connection there so I used an old router plugged into the LAN as a local wifi point right next to the inverter.
Side benefit is that phones etc work much better in the garage.
pwdst All the 2.4GHz channels have at least 7 different hotspots on them. It is jam packed.
The 5GHz band is fairly empty but the GE dongle can''t go there (it can't even go to channels 12 & 13 on the 2.4GHz band). 🙁 Hard wired connection to the inverter would be ideal but inverter can't do that either.
alan_johnston You need to get an AP with a fairly directional antenna gain pattern.
That'll help with maximising the signal from the inverter client while minimising adjacent/co-channel interference.
The disc-type APs which fix to a ceiling are usually fairly directional - gain pattern looks a bit like a doughnut in 3D - so it doesn't have a lot of gain either side, most goes vertically down with a bit of backscatter above the AP.
Try this:
_In the 2.4 GHz band, 1, 6, and 11 are the only non-overlapping channels. Selecting one or more of these channels is an important part of setting up your network correctly__
MarkMilward Decent advice but that's only the case if you have 802.11g enabled on the AP. The shoulders (sidebands) don't overlap if you only enable 802.11n/ac/ax.
That's why it is in theory possible to have 1, 5, 9 & 13 in use with 20MHz bandwidth.
In practice of course some idiot will inevitably have chosen to use something like channel 7 with 40MHz bandwidth - German cars (VAG/BMW) are appallingly bad for effectively destroying 2.4GHz usage for anyone nearby by doing the above so channel selection won't help if a neighbour has one of these. Directional antennae are all you can do to mitigate the interference.