Orbi WiFi 7 RBE973
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Enhance orbi outdoor

lars83Berlin
Aspirant

Enhance orbi outdoor

Hi,

I'm using a rbr850 and 2x rbs850 indoor. The Problem is, outdoor the wifi is too Bad to connect the tesla car. There's no Ethernet cable outside. Any idea how to enhance the wifi outdoor with powerline?
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CrimpOn
Guru

Re: Enhance orbi outdoor


@lars83Berlin wrote:
I'm using a rbr850 and 2x rbs850 indoor. The Problem is, outdoor the wifi is too Bad to connect the tesla car. There's no Ethernet cable outside. Any idea how to enhance the wifi outdoor with powerline?

Tesla's have WiFi that will connect at 2.4G or 5G.  According to this post, it is really common for the car to select 2.4G because typical 5G WiFi signals do not penetrate exterior walls as well as 2.4G:

https://www.reddit.com/r/teslamotors/comments/g9tu5z/what_wifi_do_the_model_3s_have/ 

 

A WiFi extender would be the easiest and least costly method to extend WiFi outside to the car.

  • Get a WiFi extender from any brand. Netgear's EX3700 is inexpensive.
  • Locate it inside the house as close as possible to where the car is parked outside, but where it still can connect to the home WiFi.
  • Using the extender web interface, turn off the 5G broadcast and change the 2.4G broadcast to something different than the home WiFi name (SSID).  This will insure that the car does not attempt to connect to the home WiFi rather than the extender.
  • Set up the car to use this WiFi.

PowerLine is a useful technology (I use PowerLine to connect a Tivo and Tivo Mini to my router because it made less of a "tangle of wires" than MoCHA - which also worked great.) Netgear sells a suitable unit:

https://www.netgear.com/home/wired/powerline/plw1000/ 

 

I see two distinct issues with PowerLine:

  • PowerLine requires an electrical outlet on the exterior of the house to plug the WiFi unit into.  There may already be an outlet if the Tesla is being charged at home.
  • The WiFi half of the PowerLine product will be outdoors and is not weatherproof.  It will need to be placed inside some sort of weatherproof enclosure.

In addition, PowerLine is really sensitive to the house electrical wiring.  It works really great when the two units are on the same electrical circuit. Once the signal goes through electrical breaker panels to other circuits and the physical distance gets longer, it is not nearly as reliable.  Also, certain types of circuit breakers really  mess with PowerLine.  My first PowerLine consisted of four units.  Router - Tivo Mini - Tivo Master - Garage switch.  After the third time that the PowerLine unit in the garage lost connection (LED red. No data) I eliminated that fourth unit and installed another Orbi satellite in the garage.

 

All-in-all, I would spend the $30 to try an EX3700 first before fussing around with weatherproof enclosures, etc.

 

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