What's new

Wifi device offline log

  • SNBForums Code of Conduct

    SNBForums is a community for everyone, no matter what their level of experience.

    Please be tolerant and patient of others, especially newcomers. We are all here to share and learn!

    The rules are simple: Be patient, be nice, be helpful or be gone!

swin66

New Around Here
I have a Midea aircon unit which is set up to connect to my merlin mesh.

It works most of the time but regularly goes offline, but I've no idea why. To get it back on the network I have to do a power recycle of the device.

I'm looking for clues as to why it does this and have sent an email to Midea but it would be good to try and track when it goes offline and see if there is a pattern.

Are there any logs within merlin that will tell me when the device drops off the network?

If so, what are they?

If not, what can I do to log this? Add-on? script?

TIA
 
Welcome, @swin66.

What radio band do you use to connect to the unit with? What is the distance and obstacles between it and the router?

What router do you have? What firmware? What is the pertinent setup? What options do you have enabled? What Control Channels are in use? What Channel Bandwidths?

What other troubleshooting steps have you tried? When it goes offline, is the network in heavy use?

When was the last time you reset your router to factory defaults, after flashing the latest firmware available for it?
 
Welcome, @swin66.

What radio band do you use to connect to the unit with? What is the distance and obstacles between it and the router?

What router do you have? What firmware? What is the pertinent setup? What options do you have enabled? What Control Channels are in use? What Channel Bandwidths?

What other troubleshooting steps have you tried? When it goes offline, is the network in heavy use?

When was the last time you reset your router to factory defaults, after flashing the latest firmware available for it?
Router: RT-AC86U in Ai-Mesh mode, firmware 3.0.384.19; in my house;
Node: RT-AC68U, firmware 3.0.384.19; in external wooden building approx 10m away;

A/C unit is in the wooden building approx 6 metres from the AC68U unit with a direct line of sight.

Wifi strength is very good in the building and I can stream movies, do zoom calls etc no problem

A/C unit only works on 2.4GHz

I've not really troubled shot it yet because I don't know when it goes down and that was my first step, but I'm not sure exactly how to find that out.

I'm not a network expert and the Merlin setup is fairly standard as far as I remember.

I can give more details if you need particular settings.

I've looked for more info on the A/C unit tech spec regarding wifi but not found any yet.
 
Trouble is I don't know when that is.

The A/C unit works fine in its own right using the remote control etc

However, it's in a separate building and so it's handy to turn it on in the morning remotely - but I have no idea when or why it goes offline.

I was initially trying to establish if there is a log or a way to establish the point it goes offline.

I also have HomeAssistant on my network and that may be able to help, but I was originally asking if merlin had a way of doing it since it's the point of contact for the A/C unit.
 
People have written scripts to keep track of wifi devices. The exact commands are dependent on what router, and I'm not sure how AiMesh would play.
Here's one example I found
 
My only suggestion to you after reading all you have provided and the responses from other members here too is to upgrade from the firmware that is stuck in time since this past summer to RMerlin 386.1 Beta 2.

@john9527 does have the answer you asked for, directly, and his input has been the most valuable, but knowing when something is offline isn't a help, IMO.

While the RMerlin Beta 2 version isn't as polished as the release 384.19_0, it is also much improved over that older firmware. Particularly for AiMesh setups (v2.0 vs. v1.0).

You may find that someone may have a suggestion that works to track this down and fix it. But that seems unlikely to me, now (172 people have viewed it already with no further suggestions).

What I suggest is to flash both routers to RMerlin firmware 386.1 Beta 2 (you'll be doing this eventually, anyway) and fully reset them before putting them back into service.


New M&M 2020


Note: the new SSID's may not be needed if the wireless drivers on both routers don't change with the new firmware, you'll need to check if that is true. But you should use the recommended attributes for them and for the main login credentials and passwords.

Also, after adding an AiMesh node to the network, be sure you turn off WPS again in the main router's GUI. That gets enabled to be able to add a new node but is not needed afterward.

If, after completing the above, the issue remains, that is where further troubleshooting can start. Trying to troubleshoot outdated AiMesh issues on older firmware is not an effective use of time.
 

Latest threads

Sign Up For SNBForums Daily Digest

Get an update of what's new every day delivered to your mailbox. Sign up here!
Top