emonTX / ESP8266 and Apple Airport stations

Just thought I post this, in case anyone else has similar problems in the future.

A while ago I had enormous difficulties getting my emonTX / ESP8266’s to connect to my Apple based wifi network. So much so that I had to invest in several Airport Express APs & locate them merely a couple of centimetres from the emonTXs. All a bit of a palaver but at least it worked. IIRC at the time, someone mentioned something about possible issues with Airports not playing well with emonTX/ESP8266’s, but I chose to ignore that advice :sob: :sob: :sob:

I have recently moved my network from Apple to Unifi hardware, and I have been able to remove the co-located Airport Expresses. The emonTX/ESP8266’s seem to be able to work with higher -Db (ie lower signal strengths?) than they did within the Apple ecosystem, which is great news.

So, if anyone else has similar issues, do consider not using Airport APs …

Yes - the decibel is a relative measurement. So a received signal that indicates -31 dB (my router 1 m from this machine) is a much stronger signal than my neighbour’s at -58 dB that’s come about 15 m and through several brick walls, and that’s stronger than another neighbour’s at -74 dB that’s come further and through even more brick walls.

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I cannot comment on the Apple gear, but the Ubiquiti kit is not a panacea IME. I have had no end of troubles connecting older Android tablets and some IOT ESP8266 devices/software stacks - the connections to the AP keep dropping out.

I now have a small router running OpenWRT to which all my IOT devices connect and it is rock solid even over extended distances.

If you are having issues, I suggest a dedicated router for your IOT devices, just working on 2.4GHz and see if that helps before coughing up a significant amount of money.

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