Welcome to today’s daily kōrero!
Anyone can make the thread, first in first served. If you are here on a day and there’s no daily thread, feel free to create it!
Anyway, it’s just a chance to talk about your day, what you have planned, what you have done, etc.
So, how’s it going?
Got our cats one of those drinking water fountains - one cat is completely indifferent, but the other looooooooooooves it. She used to play with her water when it was in a bowl, dipping her paws in and flicking it everywhere, which was cute but quite messy… So I recommend it for any others out there with cats that play with their water more than drinking it.
They don’t still play with the water in the bottom?
Nah, the main tank isn’t accessible to them, just the fountain bit, and a shallow bowl at the top. No more kitchen puddles!
Oh nice! I looked up cat fountains and the ones I saw were like a bowl with a fountain falling into the water at the bottom. Sounds like you’re carefully picked yours!
I’m trying to work out what I did to break my wifi. Pretty sure it’s just the Amplifi mesh network, it’s crazy unstable. I tried changing channels but that didn’t help. Anyone have suggestions?
Change anything in the setup recently? Or just started acting up?
Heaps! Haha, I shouldn’t have messed with things. I actually discovered today one of the mesh points wasn’t working. Not sure why, but it was reported as disconnected when it was plugged in. Maybe the OS had crashed?
I also had another go at using an Ethernet backbone just now. Last time I tried it did not go well, but it’s working great now! Of course, the nature of unstable WiFi is that it’s great sometimes and terrible others so we will see if its new found solid connection will last.
Fingers crossed!
I’m personally not a big fan of mesh systems, but there are situations that call for it. Luckily, our house is small enough that a centrally placed AP covers the majority of it.
A centrally placed AP would cover ours too, but the fibre box is behind the TV in one corner of the house, and my bedroom in the opposite corner. Watching Netflix in bed didn’t really work.
Now that I’ve had a mesh system, I think putting the effort in to do a centrally located AP would have been a better choice.
The previous owner of our house had the fiber run at the furthest corner of the garage in the roof all the way to the other side so the ONT is in the kitchen/lounge/dining. Since there was already a fiber optic cable coming through our ceiling, I just said screw it and ran Ethernet back up from the ONT and into the garage, where I put my router/switch/NAS.
Since I already put holes in the ceiling, I just did a run so my AP could be mounted on the ceiling centrally. I covered the hole where all the cables go into the garage with a brush plate, so it’s not as ugly 😂
Haha nice! Our wifi on the mesh network seems stable now that the ethernet backbone is back again. I’m nervous to say it though because it might jinx it 😟
How old are the devices? I’ve had routers in the past that after a couple of years just gave up. They were cheapish though.
Hmm at least a few years but not old by any stretch. They are Ubiquiti so should be decent quality.
I’ve actually had another go tonight at connecting an Ethernet backbone (wire in the second mesh point with Ethernet instead of using half the WiFi bandwidth for the transfer), last time I tried it, well that was about when all the troubles started so I assumed it was related. Reversing it didn’t help though, and I’ve just tried reenabling it and the internet is better than it’s been in ages.
Hopefully it lasts, though it has been off and on great and terrible so we will see.
Ubiquity should be fine yes. I’m running one AP in our living room and it’s been awesome.
Guess you tried the obvious, like changing channel and restarting it. Sorry no experience with mesh networking except zigbee which is a different topic.
It seems like it’s been more stable this last 24 hours so fingers crossed!
If you’re an expert in zigbee, my humidity/temp sensor isn’t working all of a sudden and I don’t know why. It’s a cheap one off ali express so it probably just died (only a few months old) but you said you’re an expert in zigbee and it uses zigbee so I might as well ask 😆
Probably dead battery. The battery indicator in HA is useless, some of mine goes from 90% to dead.
I’ve stopped trying to re-pair missing Zigbee devices, it usually fixes itself over time. Otherwise restarting HA works.
Update: I replaced the battery and it’s working now. Hopefully this one lasts a lot longer!
Nice!
Ah OK, I’ll have to try a new battery. Is it normal for the battery to only last a few months?
Ive had one last only 4 months on a proper Panasonic battery. Also depends on the battery, Eg if it came with a battery it’s probably low quality.
Pbtech is cheapest for those batteries.
Another whitewater kayaking trip today, this time down the Akatarawa river. My first time down this river, we encountered a fallen tree that had completely spanned the river, requiring a portage across.
Also a big step up in difficulty for me, with some of the rapids on this being grade three.
The one that flows through Staglands? Do you have to get out and go around what they call the “bushman’s bridge”, a log they put across the river that you can walk across?
That’s a long way up the river from where we started, we put in at Karapoti Rd.
Now I think about it, it’s a long drive out there, it makes sense you wouldn’t go that far in.
