Author Topic: Can't connect  (Read 10865 times)

Gangee

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Can't connect
« on: June 28, 2010, 12:12:09 pm »
I'm using a Linksys WET610N Wireless adaptor.

If I unplug my laptop, turn off wireless and connect my laptop in the adaptor, I can get on the Internet fine.  So I know the adaptor is working.  Also, I can connect to the adaptor and login into it, it has an IP addy assigned by my wireless device.  So it looks fine.

But when I run the EtherRain Admin, it says "Device not found".  It looks like the signal strength on it is 39%. 

So what to do?



Jim

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Re: Can't connect
« Reply #1 on: June 28, 2010, 06:19:13 pm »
Hello Gangee,

Thanks for your post.  (This is a copy of the email that I sent to you, repost for benefit of others)

When EtherRain Admin sends out its discovery packets it uses UDP, which means they are not retransmitted if not received by the wireless device.  Your computer is probably using TCP/IP to connect to the Internet, which means dropped packets ARE retransmitted.  If you hooked up a network monitor you might see a lot of retries.  I believe the Cisco unit has some statistics on it.

You can try re-broadcasting by clicking the "discover" button a few times to try to get a response.

The 39% signal strength may be too low for reliable operation in your case.  It's hard to put a percentage number on it because interference is random, though I would not recommend running irrigation with this signal strength.  The nice thing about the Cisco bridges is that they have a signal strength indicator.  However that only provides the received signal strength, and not the transmitted signal strength.  The transmitted signal may be reaching your wireless access/point router at a very low strength also, maybe even lower than the 39% number.  A lot has to do with antenna placement and interference zones.

Best bet is to locate the wireless bridge were reliable connections can be made (sorry, I know that sounds obvious). Would it be possible for you to locate the wireless unit closer to the WiFi receiver?  Better connectivity can usually also be achieved by mounting the bridge as high as possible off the ground and away from metal devices and fluorescent lights.  
Hope this helps diagnose.
JIm

« Last Edit: June 28, 2010, 06:33:00 pm by Jim »

Gangee

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Re: Can't connect
« Reply #2 on: June 28, 2010, 10:15:33 pm »
I got it.
I ended up running an Ethernet cable out, it's working fine.  I would have done that to begin with, but for some reason I thought it'd be to hard.  It was simple, ran it out from the crawl space. 
So I've got my device configured, tested it back to the host account, everything seems kosher.
So next thing I need to hook the wires from my controller up to it?