Solved Need help in network design to connect my pellet stove to local network

[o0larry0o]

Hello all
I'm looking for a solution to improve my network connection to my pellet stove from my home assistant box (Raspberry PI 4)

Currently, my HA box is wired to my local network, and all my automation appliance are on the local network(shelly's etc.)
except my pellet stove, wich is acting like a wifi hotspot, broadcasting an SSID and it has a DHCP server.

My HA box connects to the stove as a client using it's built-in wifi (so this is a different subnet than my local network)
Here lies the problem, this wifi connection is really not stable, the HA OS has a lot of trouble connecting to the stove, I have to do it manually and it require several try to connect.
sometime the connection is lost, and I have to do it all over again, it's a pain.
There are no satisfying solution for this, i've been searching and trying for month, even adding a Wifi usb dongle does not seem to resolve the issue.(but haven't tried)

I don't have any trouble connecting to the stove from my smartphone, or my PC, this is issue is either with the RPI itself or the HA OS (linux based).

So I'm looking for a nice way to add the stove to my lan, like with a client to connect to the stove, which will also be connected to my local network.
Routing will be needed

I have an ISP router connected to internet, as my main internal router is an Asus RT-AC86U running AsusWRT Merlin

Here's 2 drawings of the current situation and target.

I'm looking for a device that will be able to connect as a client to the stove, and connect to my main lan on the other side.
the device should be small, I don't want to buy a real router, it would be a loss of money for this single usage.
The easiest way would be for that device to be able to do routing (maybe a nano router flashed with DD-wrt or openwrt ??)

an other way would be to leave the routing to the RT-AC86U with a VLAN and a different subnet, but as far as I can see since i'm running in router mode I can't do that. (I looked for tutorial for wrt-merlin all over)

Do you have any suggestion for achieving this ?

Thx a lot

 

[bbunge]

The best thing to do is to change the stove from a WIFI server to a client. It likely has a SBC like,e a RPI. The stove mfr made it like it is for folks that do not have WIFI in the house.

 

[o0larry0o]

Thx for your reply but this is built-in, I have no way of modifying this nor the skills.
and it was not my question

 

[bbunge]

Here is something for you to look at: https://community.home-assistant.io...ion-for-smart-stove-pellet-stove-app/345543/6

Edit: If you really want to use WIFI to connect the RPI add a USB WIFI adapter. The RPI has a small antenna and an external USB WIFI will work better. I use a Pi3b+ with JMRI to control my model train layout and an external antenna helped as the layout is in the back corner of the basement.

 

[o0larry0o]

ho woaw ... yeah that's what I was saying about the lack of skills.
And I don't want to tear my stove open to play around with the embedded server.

But this looks really cool anyway.


I'll stick with some network stuff I think

 

[o0larry0o]

okay that was quick.
I did it using a small TP-link TL-802N
configured as WISP
Wan ISP as client on the stove
Static Lan IP on LAN side

Static route on the Asus to the stove via the TP link.

Did not think of that in the first place.

 

[sfx2000]

The best thing to do is to change the stove from a WIFI server to a client. It likely has a SBC like,e a RPI. The stove mfr made it like it is for folks that do not have WIFI in the house.

Wonder if this is like some of the ESP32 type of devices - they boot up initially as AP's so a phone can find them to pair and configure the device - it's usually a one-time thing if done correctly...

 

[o0larry0o]

Hello @sfx2000
It's an ESP8266 I think (I ran an NMAP yesterday, forgot the exact version) which is up continuously, with port 80 and 81 open, I 80 is only there to present a single web page to tell you, youconnected the wifi properly, the 81 is a websocket for interacting with it using the app

On first connection you have to connect to the stove with it "internal" wifi (the on I'm talking about in this post) to configure the secondary wifi (yes there are 2 wifi card ^^) this one is a client that connects to your home wifi, for cloud connection.

Then you can control your stove, with the app via cloud, or with the app while connected to the "internal" wifi.

I using the internal wifi with Home Assistant to connect to the websocket an emulate the app.