@BenAtSense responded to a post in the Facebook group talking about that the Sense often will not join a wifi network that was not present at the point of startup. He asked if anyone else had experienced it.
I think the Facebook group is a valuable resource, but I also feel that the more reports we get on the “official” forums, the better. So, since Ben was looking for anyone else who has seen similar problems, I thought I would post here so others could reply and have it documented on the Sense community.
The specific scenario that Billy and Chris mentioned on Facebook:
Home power loss. So Sense, wifi, internet etc… all go down.
When power is restored, the Sense boots quicker than wifi. Because the Sense doesn’t see the wifi signal, it stops trying and seems to never try again. Only power cycling the Sense after you know that the wifi signal is up and running will get the Sense back online.
I can personally say I have seen this on multiple occasions. This winter we had 3 power outages over 4 hours (about the time my UPS keeps my network gear alive). I was away for two of the outages. The time I was home, I just power cycled the breaker the Sense was on and it came back. The two times I was not home, after the power was restored enough to get the network gear back online, I could still not see the Sense. “Luckily” we had several deep brown outs after power was restored and it brought the sense back online.
I have three separate wifi networks (and APs) each with their own SSID, two open and one secured. When I installed Sense I could choose any of the three and it would connect but after initial selection I could not change to a different SSID without power failing the Sense unit. I was trying to find the best signal, so I would join the network and then check what the AP was showing for signal strength from the Sense MAC.
Thanks for posting this @ben! I’ve already alerted our engineering team of the issue but it would definitely be good to get an idea of how many people have experienced this issue.
I have also had this issue @BenAtSense. A couple days ago, we had our power flicker during a storm, and I think the exact scenario the original poster described happened to me. I wasn’t sure whether Sense would keep trying or not after the first time, but it evidently didn’t, and I power cycled Sense the next day, and it came right back up.
I reported the same problem around mid March, got a Thanks. It appears the Engineering Team may not have a robust hardware simulator and can’t replicate the clearly defined problem.
I see there is a new Android Sense app but doesn’t appear they corrected the problem with truncated WiFi id’s at setup.
Your Sense should keep trying after the first time, so this is definitely something the engineering team is going to look into and work to fix. I can’t give a specific timeline for the issue being addressed, but it is definitely on our radar!