I have had a sense for almost 3 years. During that time it was configured to “attach” to a WiFi network based on a Ubuiqiti Amplifi HD network with 4 mesh points. One of those is in my office and the sense is in the panel, outside the house right behind the wall on the opposite side of the office, approximately 12 ft from the AP.
All this worked without problems. Then my Amplifi HD started having problems. Research shows these units are starting to die, Ubiquiti does not really support them anymore, so… decided to buy a new setup. Settledd on TP-Link Deco X75 Pro.
I made the switch by seting up the deco under a new SSID name and then disconnected the Amplifi, and renamed the Deco to the old SSID/pw combination. This seemed to work (as expected). All me devices now just connected to the Deco system.
Three hours later got notified Sense was offline. I went to investigate and tried to reconnect to this new mesh point (in the same location as the Amplifi was before). During setup the connectivity test failed, many times, with different errors. Sometimes communication with sense broke down (I was standing outside, right next to it), sometimes it complained it could not ping the gateway (ridiculous: this works from any other system connected to WiFi), and occasionally it complained it “might” work but speed was too low. In those cases I chose “ignore” and went ahead. Many times the unit would go offline again. It was late at night, dark, so I decided to investigate more during the day.
During the day I removed the sense from the panel (leaving connections intact). I noticed that sense was not always finding all networks (perhaps it has a limited size list, and it gets filled first come first serve?). It would also indicate a so-so signal strength in the icon. Figuring it might have something to do with the antenna, I removed that from the panel too. No change. I then disconnected the antenna… no change. That alone leads me to believe the antenna connection is broken.
All that aside, I was able to get to the “might not be fast enough; ignore” point. I also configured ny Mesh, for the sense device specifically, to not allow it to roam, to only offer 2.4 band, to not advertise mesh features etc. It now seems to stay connected, most of the time. If I run a ping command to it, it frequently does not respond, or if it does, round trip times are several seconds?!?! Network wise there should be minimal delay, so I conclude the unit itself is too busy doing things, so I am not taking that too seriously (although I think it should not happen).
So my question is whether anybody else has been experiencing these kinds of problems, and whether or not TP-Link Deco is implicated (I did try to connect to an old Apple WiFi station that I am trying to phase out, and that worked without problem). Secondly, what’s up with these various connectivity test failures which seem nonsensical? James?
I can’t give you much help as my connection has always been rock solid through both Apple and Ubiquiti APs using a 2.4G only SSID. As for the WiFi test - it has seemed useful to me, though the speed part of testing has always been a little mysterious.
dolfs…2-3 years ago I update my WiFi to Netgear mesh. Found that my Carrier thermostat was not compatable with mesh. Had to get a new thermostat. Not cheap. Just under a grand. Can’t remember what I did with Sense. Still running my DSL from the phone company. It my be running under it. I pick my battles…Hi… Later…Gerry
I have the exact same problem, however it started with my Netgear Orbi RBK850. Since it was a WIFI 6 mesh system, I changed to te Deco BE95 Wifi 7 and never was able to reconnect to my Sense again. Everything that happened to you happened to me as well. I followed all troubleshooting instructions, created a separate 2.4Ghz network, removed the WPA protection, connected and isconnected the devices a hundred of times, etc but keep receiving the same (or different?) connectivity test failures. Could be some incompatibility with the new WIFI 7 system that needs a firmware update?
Although I am still having the problem I found a significant improvement (less frequent problem), after I used Deco’s
“Optimize Network” feature to select the most interference free channels. If you haven’t done so yet, I suggest that.
It is important to recognize that a WiFi 6, 6E or 7 mesh system really makes no difference. All those systems also support the 2.4 GHz band and the 5 GHz band (all earlier WiFi versions).
The more I read, the more I seem to find information that perhaps the Deco IOT network feature is buggy, and posibly even there whole mesh implementation. It seems that things like phones are not very sensitive to that, as they have very complete network stack software. IOT devices are often equiped with cheaper antennas and questionable quality networking software, possibly only tested on non-mesh WiFi systems. It is also leading me to the conclusion that switching to another brand of mesh may not improve the situation.
I have always been a big fan of the Ubiquiti line of WiFi products, in particular since they also support VLANs, but these are all requiring wired access points (PoE) and I cannot easily get wires in place. If I could I would have already implemented that. Even that, though, shares similarities with mesh solutions in that it allows seamless roaming, which may be part of the problem (because they are all wired, it is essentially all ethernet backhaul though).
Since I don’t really have an option, I continue to experiment. I am also concerned though that attaching the antenna, or not, seems to make no difference in the signal quality that sense perceives…
I think you’re hitting a real issue. Many of the newer “WiFi6/WiFi7” systems do a poor job maintaining compatibility with “legacy mode” 2.4GHz devices. I think it is informative that you didn’t see these issue with older Amplifi and Apple networks (I’m guessing you were running Apple in “mesh” or wireless bridge mode as well ?).
As for the antenna - I suspect that the main purpose of the attached antenna with Sense is get the receiver outside of the breaker box “faraday cage”. If you have the cover off your box, you could see similar signal level. Wavelength for 2.4GHz signal is 12.5cm, so a wire run of 6cm inside the Sense unit would act as half dipole antenna.
I have about 40 2.4 only devices. None of them are having a problem, except sense. So am I hitting a real issue? Yes, I think I am, but not in the way you are indicating…
The older Amplifi system was a 2.4/5 mesh system and had no problems. The Apple device was a singular device, so no mesh.
I had the problems both with the unit in the fully closed panel (but antenna sticking outside of course), as well as when I pulled it to hang outside. I tried both situations with the antenna connected, as well as disconnected. There was no appreciable difference in the signal strength indications Sense presented for the various networks. Also, the sense strength indications did not seem to correspond well with reality. I did a WiFi survey around my whole house and in the location of the panel, the WiFi network in question has good signal strength. My mesh also reports that the sense unit is connected with “strong” signal strength (whatever that means exactly as they don’t give numbers).
Has anybody’s Sense just stopped connecting altogether after December 18th, 2024? Currently running firmware 1.51.97-Ofb253fc-release. I wonder if this new update bricked my device or if the wifi/bluetooth module just failed.
It’s been working solidly for 6 months and now all of a sudden it’s absolutely toast. After power cycling the breaker, the unit powers on and i do see the blue and green lights flash for an instance on the antenna port and then nothing… i also see the unit is powered up since the solid amber light by the power port stays on. I can’t even connect via bluetooth to reconfigure the network settings. There’s been a few instances it connects successfully for 10-11 minutes and it’s fully operational but then it goes offline again. I have a ticket escalated with support but thought i would ask this forum as well. And also, my access point log tells me the connection on wifi is established but after 2 hours, it’s only exchanged 48kb/64kb up/down which seems very low. Anybody having trouble like me?
Welcome to the community, @yusuf.hasan . You are on the right track with going through support for the issue you describe. Many businesses are short-handed at the end of December as people celebrate holidays, so please be patient while they help you identify the problem.
yusuf.hasan… My just drops out from time to time. I get an email saying it is off line. If it remains off, I then go and turn the power breaker off for it and leave it off for 10-15 seconds and then turn it back on. Most of the time it is back on line. Hope this helps… Later…Gerry
Thanks that’s helpful Gerry. My device would do that before. It was on a 31 day online streak till dec 18th. Now it’s permanently down. I’ve been able to revive it twice for 15-20 mins/attempt. As of this post, it’s off my wifi completely as per my access point logs. Anyway i am within my 1 year warranty period and support asked me to send them my invoice. Looking forward to a potential replacement.
I have had many more drops and now Sense can’t connect to my Ubuiqiti router which has been operating flawless for last few months. I suspect Sense did update and effected Wi-Fi broadcast. Getting tired with Sense and I keep asking for Ethernet connection to resolve their poor transmission chip.
I wonder if there’s some wifi connectivity bug as of late.
My Sense has been going offline a lot more than it has been recently, and my panel is one floor directly underneath my router, so signal is not an issue. I end up having to restart my wifi radios a few times or reboot the router. I could trip the Sense breaker and have it try to reconnect, but I don’t prefer this, as it only has a small amount of volatile memory and would lose the data it hasn’t uploaded if I did that.
I have an Asus Wifi 6 router without any of its optional mesh access points… I have a dedicated 2.4ghz SSID separated out from 5ghz and I also disabled 802.11.ax on the 2.4 ghz to maintain better compatibility. While sense is offline, other 2.4 ghz devices are connected just fine and they don’t get booted all the time.
I have read there is a particular option on some asus routers that give a lot of problems:
From another forum:
I have an ASUS router that has a feature called AiProtection that was enabled. One of the sub-features within this is an option called Two-Way IPS protection that states it’s purpose is:
The Two-Way Intrusion Prevention System protects any device connected to the network from spam or DDoS attacks. It also blocks malicious incoming packets to protect your router from network vulnerability attacks, such as Shellshocked, Heartbleed, Bitcoin mining, and ransomware. Additionally, Two-Way IPS detects suspicious outgoing packets from infected devices and avoids botnet attacks.
Can you check if this option is enabled in your setup ?
If so, can you disable it and see it this helps with your problem ?
I do have it enabled, but have had Sense since 2020 and it was never an issue before. I also had an older Asus rounder (WiFi 5 / AC) before upgrading to a WiFi6 model and it used the same TrendMicro engine. Additionally, it shows 0 detection events.
In theory, it should also not be able to read https traffic unless the client device had its own certificate trusted so it could do a man-in-the-middle, but that’s not the case. It may inspect the frequency of packets and look for DDoS behaviors or malicious TLS requests using old protocols. I don’t technically need it and can try with it toggled off.
It’s been stable all weekend long though.
Asus routers can be quirky, no doubt. I am using the latest firmware.
I’m following up, after quite some time, with more information that might be helpful.
First off: my system(s) are working without problem again. I believe that is no thanks to sense, but rather to me understanding various problems and solving them. However, many will not have the option for these solutions, and the sense unit itself remains the weak link in all this…
Findings:
For anybody using mesh based systems: there are many ways to implement mesh functionality. Not all vendors use the same method, and many of them are not very well versed in the technology, only implementing the cheapest and easiest solution they can find.
Various mesh implementations cause SSID broadcast mechanisms that give sense an opportunity to switch between multiple access points that may be in range. Sense does not handle such switches well at all
The sense internals are based on a simple, non multi-tasking operating system. The easiest way to see that is to run continuous pings to the unit. Response times vary all over the place even though the network and network traffic is essentially constant during such tests. I determined that the reason is that network traffic is served in a “work-loop” typical of Arduino type solutions (not saying that there is an Arduino inside). That means that if one component activated by the loop takes quite a bit of time, handling of things like responding to ping requests is delayed. This could be improved by better software engineering, but doing so in a “work-loop” model is a lot harder than in a full fledged OS, and so it tends not to be done.
The sense firmware has many other weak points.
One of which is a limited size of its WiFi found list. In dense environments where your neighbors are close, all have one or more WiFi networks, etc. sense may find many networks quickly during its scan window. Once the list is full, it stops scanning. It is a matter of timing/luck whether the network you want actually shows up. Luckily you can repeat and, perhaps, get lucky.
Reported WiFi signal strength is almost certainly incorrect. I have correlated actually measured signal strength on various networks around me with what sense reports. It is always much less than reality. This either means sense’s notion of signal strength is incorrect, or there is a significant deficiency in its antenna system.
The “tests” performed upon WiFi selection are poorly understood by the customer and the error messages frequently make no sense given a particular situation. The test seem to detect circumstances that are no problem in reality, but cause a refusal to connect by sense
I have reported, in the past, about the firmware refusing to honor DNS settings provided by the network, a potential security issue. Only very knowledgable people can get around that using their router
Firmware does not recover (well) in the face of changing WiFi, whether caused by so-so mesh implentations or other scenarios.
WiFi 6 or 7 is implicated by various other posts. I am pretty sure that such capabilities, by themselves, are not a problem. It is argued that more modern products do not implement 2.4 GHz WiFi well. While that may be true, I do not believe that to be the problem. Mesh systems are more likely the culprit. To be clear: mesh systems themselves are not the culprit, but rather the shoddy quality of the network stack inside the sense firmware. It is not having enough internal quality handling of various scenarios, and is not tested well.
If your mesh system is capable, or likely, to create network loops, all the time, or intermittently, this is a big problem for sense.
I have found all TP-Link products to be in this category. Even when wired for backhaul, they will at unpredictable times, choose to use wireless connections, sometimes even simultaneously with wired connections. This then causes network loops. Some people’s equipment will flag this and shut down switch ports to eleminate loops, others will not. The “looping” bahvior, if not suppressed, throws sense into disarray. If suppressed, whole network segments become inaccessible, causing its own set of problems
I have detected this behavior in two different residences, equipped with four Deco X75, and the other with three Deco X55. No amount of working with settings fixed this.
The problem even happened when all units were wired for backhaul
There are many other things I could say, but I’ll switch to what worked for me, realizing it is out of the realm of possibility for many:
I ditched the X75 setup completely and returned it (thank you Amazon for letting me do this outside the return window; TP-Link had stalled support, suggesting they would RMA it, but in the end refused)
I replaced the setup with Ubuiqiti access points (U7 Pro in my case).
Backhaul wiring was already in place, so all units are wired, and no mesh functionality enabled
Four total access points
Support for all versions of WiFi up to 7
I configured so that sense connects to an IoT network (separate VLAN), and specifically on an SSID limited to 2.4 GHz only
I configured the network to only allow sense to connect to a specific AP eventhough it can “see” others
I used VLAN functionality to implement true network isolation. This has nothing to do with the sense problems, but it something that TP-Link advertises, but not actually provides. This may be true for others as well
Yes, this cost me a little more than 2x what the TP-Link approach cost me
But I have much better coverage or signal quality, many better features, and an overall flawless experience
I do not believe that any of the other settings, for example Asus, etc. are directly at issue. Rather the nature of cheap(er) WiFi and mesh implementation exposes weaknesses in sense firmware. Given you cannot change the sense unit, nor does the company seem capable, interested, or competent, to fix these issues on their end: if you want to keep sense your best bet (outside of an approach like mine) is to connect the sense unit to a dedicated, and simple, WiFi. This can be achieved using methods described above, or sometimes it can be achieved with a single, and additional, access point, located near the sense unit, on a dedicated SSID. For a while, during my experiments, I used an old Apple Airport Express for this purpose (I removed this once the Unifi solution was in place). That worked fine, so if you have an old one lying around, or can get one cheap, this might be a good approach.