PumpUpVolume

10 hours ago, penn65000 said:

IMO you need to rma the remote. Suspect you’ve a bad radio. We had a few. 

Certainly there are indications that the NEEO is defective. The counterargument would be that doesn't make sense since the problem is made to go away by rebooting the WiFi access point. Rebooting the router doesn't fix the problem; rebooting the NEEO doesn't fix the problem; rebooting the WiFi access point, however, does make the problem go a way for 10 days or so. What I find so puzzling is why does only device/client stop working and no other devices are impacted but rebooting the access point fixes the issue. I can't even come up with a theory as to the root cause of the issue. It is a bit difficult to conceive how a defective radio in the NEEO manifests as a connectivity problem after ~10 days of use, rebooting the NEEO doesn't fix the issue, but rebooting the WiFi access point does.

I am updating this thread to note that changing the WAP 2.4 GHz channel and lengthening the guard interval on the WAP did not solve the issue. The same bad behaviour has returned. I reboot all devices and then it works fine for a period of time, but then it reverts to all the same problems ("please wait", spinning wheel, "cannot connect to network", etc).

The most characteristic aspect of this problem is that it works smoothly for a period of time and then suddenly starts exhibiting issues. Once it starts exhibiting issues, the issues persist until everything is rebooted.

40 minutes ago, PumpUpVolume said:

Does anyone know whether the WiFi chip in the Halo has a 5 GHz radio? That would be sweet.

Answering my own question here --> Yes, it does: "and Wi-Fi 2.4 and 5GHz support with an advanced antenna array with up to 5 times stronger signal."

https://www.control4.com/solutions/products/remotes/

That sounds like the answer to my woes.

Does anyone know whether the WiFi chip in the Halo has a 5 GHz radio? That would be sweet.

5 hours ago, Amr said:

Neeo’s use a horrible WiFi chip, I believe it’s Texas Instruments, these are lousy chips prone to disconnections and totally not stable, the worst ever chips, Sensibo used the same chip in their 1st generation of Sky, total failure, they had to swap 1000’s of units to early adopters, I was one of them, they sent me 5 new Sky units with Esperssif chips, they asked me to trash the ones I have and not send them back! The new ones never went off line for the past 7 years!

Anyways using TI chips is a big mistake that users paid for it as they won’t change the remotes obviously!

Will the Halo sport a better WiFi chip?

2 hours ago, dw886 said:

FWIW, I'm on a Ubiquiti setup with 5 WAPs and multiple NEEOs and don't have these issues. 

 

It's hard to dissect what's going on in your environment without having some diagnostics.  If you have multiple remotes with the same issue, I'd lean towards it being a wifi issue.  If it was a single remote, then I'd think that it was the remote and I'd start by swapping that Neeo with one in another room.  If you have a wifi mapper it may give you more information on what's on the band.  I was just looking through the logs from one of our Etherscopes to find an example - here's one where we were at a customer's home working on the network when they turned on the microwave.  The interference spanned channels 4-12 - since it was a microwave, it was short lived - we likely just caught the end of it:

 

For those on UBNT hardware, if you decide to lock it to an AP just toggle this under settings on the client - just remember that this carries some risk because if this AP goes down, this setting will keep the client offline because the client will not connect to another AP (also won't roam if you carry the NEEO to the other side of the house):

 

Interestingly enough, it does look like the MAC addresses on the NEEOs changed at some point, pointing to a difference in WiFi hardware.  Here's 3 NEEOs currently connected - the middle one is significantly newer than the top and bottom ones - although the signal that they are receiving is not significantly different.  The one with the poorest signal is in the poorest location relative to the access points:

It is interesting to note that the MAC on my NEEO starts with 4C:24, which is similar to the middle one in your list above. That is, the MAC in my NEEO aligns with the one in your group that doesn't work as well. This could be random coincidence, but it does support your hypothesis that there might be two pools of WiFi chips with one pool being problematic. I'm not going to jump to any conclusions, but at the very least it is an interesting coincidence.

4 minutes ago, dw886 said:

FWIW, I'm on a Ubiquiti setup with 5 WAPs and multiple NEEOs and don't have these issues. 

 

It's hard to dissect what's going on in your environment without having some diagnostics.  If you have multiple remotes with the same issue, I'd lean towards it being a wifi issue.  If it was a single remote, then I'd think that it was the remote and I'd start by swapping that Neeo with one in another room.  If you have a wifi mapper it may give you more information on what's on the band.  I was just looking through the logs from one of our Etherscopes to find an example - here's one where we were at a customer's home working on the network when they turned on the microwave.  The interference spanned channels 4-12 - since it was a microwave, it was short lived - we likely just caught the end of it:

 

For those on UBNT hardware, if you decide to lock it to an AP just toggle this under settings on the client - just remember that this carries some risk because if this AP goes down, this setting will keep the client offline because the client will not connect to another AP (also won't roam if you carry the NEEO to the other side of the house):

 

Interestingly enough, it does look like the MAC addresses on the NEEOs changed at some point, pointing to a difference in WiFi hardware.  Here's 3 NEEOs currently connected - the middle one is significantly newer than the top and bottom ones - although the signal that they are receiving is not significantly different.  The one with the poorest signal is in the poorest location relative to the access points:

As indicated previously, I will conduct a new WiFi site survey as soon as I can obtain a notebook PC; I presently have access/use of several computers, but they are all either desktops or they are locked down such that I can't install a sniffer app.

I have only one NEEO and only one 2.4 GHz radio in the house, so I don't have the option to try swapping between rooms, etc. This is one remote, one WAP environment.

I can say for certain that the issue is not something like microwave oven interference in our case. The problem is present when the microwave is not in use. When our NEEO stops responding properly it stays in that state for hours, days, or weeks at a time. I'm never quite sure what gets it working again, but is not simply some intermittent interference issue. That would not explain that observed pattern. If it is an interference issue, the source of the interference must be something that operates pretty continuously over periods of days, which does not include a microwave oven. Our cordless phones do not use the 2.4GHz band; we have a single model of cordless phone in the house and it is the 5 GHz type. We don't have any other remote systems in the house and certainly not ones used on any continuous basis. If there is an interference issue, about the only practical source of such would be the neighboring houses on either of two sides; that is a valid possibility.

At the moment, I've got my fingers crossed that the root cause of the problem was having the WAP on channel 3 and there was cross-channel interference from the WiFi in the neighbors house. Evidently, I will get more insight into this when I can conduct a site survey - I'm looking into borrowing a notebook to do this. I know what needs to be done - I have conducted site surveys before - I just don't presently have a notebook computer I can use for this purpose. The NEEO has responded well since I got the WAP reconfigured to a standard channel and extended the guard interval. I'm not celebrating yet, however, as sometimes the problem goes dormant for days or even weeks.

1 minute ago, RyanE said:

Probably Wifi Roaming.

The Neeos work best when they are setup to connect to a single 2.4GHz Access point.

RyanE

Well, there may be more than one issue in play, but in my case I only have a single 2.4GHz radio in the house and the NEEO can't stay connected to it and/or there is signal interference. The WAP is located within feet of where the NEEO is used.

I do understand that cross channel interference is a bigger problem that co-channel interference, so maybe moving from channel 3 to channel 6 will be a solution for me, but too early to tell at this point.

2 hours ago, cshepard said:

FWIW: we have a client with ten Neeos. He started out with 4 and liked them so much he added another 6. We have several others with between four & six of them in their systems. All these systems are using all UniFi networks (router, switches, & APs). We rarely have any trouble with them.

That is interesting given that someone else commented that they simply couldn't get the NEEO to work with ubiquiti products. I wonder what the difference is between the configurations?

10 hours ago, RAV said:

(also, if you can setup a DMZ in your ISP router, than you can add your own router and not deal with bridging the ISP one)

I explored the DMZ approach in great detail at one point and hit a wall. I'd need to go back to my notes to confirm, but I think the issue I ran into is this... The connection to the ISP is currently negotiated by the Home Hub 3000. I cannot see the account name and password that it uses to negotiate the connection with the ISP. I think that the ISP recognized some hard programmed identifier in the Home Hub 3000 - there is no place where an account and password is visible or can be entered; however that works is entirely hidden. If I set up another router in the DMZ then I need to have the credentials to negotiate the WAN connection to the ISP. My ISP refuses to give those credentials to me. I did find instructions on how to get this information for the Home Hub 3000 if you have device issued by Bell in Ontario. However, the Home Hub 3000 issued is Manitoba is different hardware and different firmware and none of the Ontario instructions apply to the Manitoba configuration. I have not been able to find a Manitoba version of those instructions. Thus, I hit the wall because I was unsuccessful at figuring out the login credentials. I did manage to talk to an empathic tech at Bell MTS who said to me "look, I can see you have a good technical understanding and I am confident that you will figure out how to make the connection if you plug away at it long enough. I'm prohibited from telling you how to do it, but you can probably eventually figure out on your own. However, I'm cautioning you, you will have other other problems and when you call us we will be able to see what you've done and we won't support you until you set your router back to the default configuration. We have other customers that have attempted the DMZ approach and they all have problems and we won't provide support to fix those problems." At that point I flew the white flag on the idea of a DMZ approach. If anyone on the forum knows how to set up the DMZ on a MB Bell MTS Home Hub 3000 and obtain the correct login credential, I'm interested in that information.

In full candour, I doubt this is a router issue. It might be a WAP issue. I'm not about to invest energy into inserting a second router unless there is reason to believe that it is a router issue.

Keep in mind, traffic between my NEEO and the EA3 processor does NOT travel through the router. That traffic goes from the NEEO --> WAP --> Smart Switch --> EA3 Processor (and the reverse). The router is the least involved actor. My router does NAT and WAN and not much more. I'm not using the radios on the router and on the LAN side there is basically a single gig line to the switch.

13 hours ago, dw886 said:

You're getting channel interference on 2.4GHz - a networking problem that's being exposed by the Neeo. 

Just because some other device that's on 2.4 is working well doesn't mean that it's not an interference issue - the Neeo may be closer to the interfering device that's operating on the 2.4GHz band, and the skybell (that's outside) may be further from the offending device negating the interference (and allowing it to communicate better with the wifi).  As someone else already noted, for 2.4GHz, only channels 1, 6, or 11 should be used and a max width of 20Mhz to prevent channel overlap.  Remember 2.4GHz has a ton of things operating on it outside of Wifi (microwaves, baby monitors, bluetooth, cordless phones, zigbee, wireless keyboards/mice, lots of hub/spoke devices like Blink cameras, etc), so just because you only see one SSID broadcasting doesn't mean that you have clean 2.4GHz airspace - a site survey would tell you what's all running in that range - right now we're just guessing. 

If trial and error is the approach rather than doing a proper scan / site survey with something like an etherscope, then you're doing the correct things (moving to channel 6).  If that doesn't work, I'd go to 11.

 

Without completely going into the technical weeds here, you can see in this example channel scan chart that in my example network there's something sitting too wide (40mhz) in the 1-6 range, so my airspace around channel 11 is cleaner - no idea what yours looks like without more diagnostic tools.

I did a site survey with inSSIDer when I originally installed the network, but that was a long ago and much could have changed. The only reason why I have repeated that recently is all the computers I own are desktop units, which are, for obvious reasons, a poor tool for conducting a WiFi survey. I'm working at borrowing or buying a notebook so that I can do another site survey. I know what needs to be done, I just lack the required hardware tool at the moment.

The system is now running with the modified setting:

• Channel 6 (fixed)
• 20 MHz channel width (unchanged)
• Guard interval = long - 800 ns
• Full output power (unchanged, but fixed, not modulating)

so, the only real changes are channel from 3 --> 6 and Guard Interval from auto --> long - 800 ns

Both the WAP and the NEEO have been rebooted and for now the NEEO is behaving. Now let's wait and see whether these changes have made a difference.

I wish I had documented changes I made previously because the channel may have been set up this way previously; it might have been switched to 3 in an effort to solve the problem.

I ran tests with three channels using my iPhone and OOKLA. Here are the results:

Channel 1: 52 Mbps

Channel 6: 60 Mbps

Channel 11: 40 Mbps

OK... I just noticed that the WAP didn't take the settings changer earlier. I've re-changed the settings and am retesting. Will post again when I've been able to test the NEEO. The SkyBell still streams with the new settings.

I also need to make a correction to one thing I said before. My phone was on the 5.2 network when I ran the OOKLA test before. On channel 11 I get only 40 MBPS once I force the phone to the 2.4 network.

Also note that my location is not very polluted from neighbouring access WAPs. My iPhone shows my two networks (2.4 & 5.2) and one other network. Sometimes others will appear briefly, but there are only two houses that are within proximity to really have the potential to cause an issue. And I don't see any issues.

15 minutes ago, SpencerT said:

Pick a different channel.

Is the wifi enabled on your bell hub? If so, did you name the Netgear 2.4 network the same?

The radios that are built into the Bell MTS Home Hub are turned OFF (as previously noted). The Home Hub sits utility room. My WAP is perfectly centrally located and in very close proximity to where the NEEO is used.

I can try a different channel, but that seems counterintuitive given that my SkyBell streams video on the current channel and the SkyBell is located outdoors, furthest from the WAP720. If any device were prone to have an issue with the WiFi signal, it would be the SkyBell.

And, I see this spinning wheel all the time - it often stays present for long pauses like 10 - 15 seconds before something else happens

I also get a "Loading Error" frequently; see attached.

Another one of the errors that I see is "Page Error". See attached screen shot of a "Page Error" after changing the WAP settings and rebooting both the WAP and the NEEO.

This is all that I see on the NEEO setting screen - there is nothing about WiFi sleep mode...

1 minute ago, SpencerT said:

Did you reboot the radio and the neeo?

I first rebooted the radio and then I rebooted the NEEO.

4 minutes ago, PumpUpVolume said:

Changing to these settings did not work. The NEEO is presenting huge lag with the new settings. Other devices still work fine. Can still stream video from my SkyBell and still get >250MBPS through the WAP to the ISP. All devices work great except the NEEO, which is terrible.

And, yes, I did reboot the WAP and then the NEEO after changing settings.

2 minutes ago, PumpUpVolume said:

I see only two settings that are changeable:

1) Beep when docked;

2) Adaptive Brightness.

There is no setting for WiFi sleep.

I'm not deploying a multi AP network for the foreseeable future. I'll deal with that issue when I get to it. My short term goal is to solve the NEEO issue.

Oh, and putting my ISP router into bridge mode is complicated... and the moment I do, my ISP won't support me if anything goes wrong with my IP TV, which does happen occasionally. So, going to bridge mode on the ISP router is not a practical option as it just opens up a bigger can of pain. Also, note that I don't have the common Bell Home Hub 3000 which is deployed in Ontario. I have  Manitoba one which has different firmware and features. All the documentation posted online for jailbreaking the Home Hub 3000 applies to the Ontario one and not the MB one.

6 minutes ago, PumpUpVolume said:

I don't have a device handy that I can use for a site survey, so I'll try channel 11 for now and plan to do another site survey asap.

I don't believe I have any 11 b devices, so I'll try 11ng; I suppose if I have a b device, I'll discover that quickly enough as it will stop working with the new settings.

Power level is a set level. It is set to full. That is not a modulating level. The only other options are half, quarter, eighth, minimum.

I've attached a screenshot of the new settings.

Changing to these settings did not work. The NEEO is presenting huge lag with the new settings. Other devices still work fine. Can still stream video from my SkyBell and still get >250MBPS through the WAP to the ISP. All devices work great except the NEEO, which is terrible.

1 minute ago, SpencerT said:

Wifi sleep mode is under NEEO settings I'm HE.

You don't have to double NAT if you can put your isp router into "bridge" mode.

I would STRONGLY suggest that if you're going to build out a multi AP network, you ditch Netgear WAPs. 

I see only two settings that are changeable:

1) Beep when docked;

2) Adaptive Brightness.

There is no setting for WiFi sleep.

I'm not deploying a multi AP network for the foreseeable future. I'll deal with that issue when I get to it. My short term goal is to solve the NEEO issue.