Wifi Group Key

[Terpsícore Deckelman]

Im having issues with the devices in my house - I'm calling them drop outs. I'm pretty sure that's what's happening anyway, and I'm hoping there might be some experts here or at least something I can do in the WiFi settings to remedy it?

Google speaker groups have for a while now gradually got more and more troublesome. I get stuttery music when playing on speaker groups, and after a load of stuttering they just go off altogether. Occasionally get some beeps on and off (if I'm manually casting), then it just goes down to playing to one speaker in the group and it just becomes impossible to start again on said group.

For a while - picking a different speaker group with less devices deemed to rectify it, but now it does it on smaller speaker groups. Not only that, but even the non-smart devices are struggling like smart TVs getting the circle of doom when trying to stream etc..

I am finding it hard to believe that this is the amount of devices, or my WiFi connection itself, as the mesh says "great connection" and the speed is fine, and actually some devices don't seem to have a problem, but others do (I never seem to have problems with my firestick or nest thermostat)

I have virgin fibre, 200mb, Google mesh with a router and 2 extra points - all of which can pretty much see each other from where they're sitting. I've not even got any internal walls downstairs. I'm running about 30 devices in total. A combination of smart speakers, Chromecasts, Chromecast audios, a nest thermostat, couple of smart TVs etc..

In the mesh settings it looks like there's all sorts of mad stuff that can be adjusted and I'm wondering if there's maybe a way of "locking" certain devices to certain points maybe? Or at least something I can try to get it working as it used to!

(I have since downloaded a WiFi analyser app and noticed that not only are the WiFi points assigned to the busiest channels, since doing a reboot, they have assigned themselves to a different set of channels - and the speaker groups are slightly more stable now. Is this the source of the problem? And how can I stop it just changing the channels at random?)

Sorry for the continued frustration and confusion you've had with this. I know it's been a while since you posted this and I expected the community to have some thoughts on the issue. I wanted to check in to see if you got any help on this or found anything that worked for you. If everything is still the same, let me know and we can look at taking this to a higher tier of support.

Thanks for looking at this. I am still experiencing the same problems and nothing I do seems to change things. I'd learned that speaker group volume control is no longer possible unless you manually adjust each speaker individually.. but I can't see it that it's related. Shouldn't explain the dropouts should it.

And yes, the volume functionality change is due to a legal decision affecting how controls work. The dropouts, however, are definitely indicative of an issue in your devices or network setup. I'll let you know when I can get some more info to share.

Hey, captainhoward.

As an update for you, I wanted to let you know that we have a firmware update coming out now. Some people may have already received the update, but most will see it coming still. Everyone will have it before the end of April. If you receive that update and don't see an improvement in your issues here, please let me know and we can keep looking into things.

Thanks.

Hey, captainhoward.

Just to give a bit more info, the update version for both Google WiFi and Nest WiFi will be 14150.43.80. If you are seeing a different version number when you check in Google Home, you have yet to receive the updated firmware. Let me know if you have any questions about that.

Thanks.

So.. there was an update for the home app, and I noticed an improvement, slightly anyway... It still wouldn't play on all speakers at once without any stuttering, but it seemed smaller groups were a bit better. However, this only last a few days and we were back to where we were before pretty much.

I've got to say it's totally unlistenable when playing on any more than about 5 speakers. And when it gets to the stage where speakers start to drop off completely, we've even had on several occasions a situation where the speakers all drop off one by one and casting "chime" just goes crazy all around the house. The only way to stop it is restart the network.

There is something I thought I'd best add that I've noticed recently. So up until this point I've been going on the theory that it must be something with the network that's causing all this, but I've noticed that when the music is playing on speaker groups and we start to have issues, it seems that that's actually the cause of the network issues! For example - network can be stable perfectly fine, then when I start to play music on speaker groups , it actually starts disconnecting everything from the network (not just the speakers but smart TVs, phones, everything). If I wasn't playing music they would stay connected just fine. What's that all about?

Again, It all starts with the songs stuttering for the first 20-30 seconds then it might play nice for the rest of the song, but as soon as the next song starts, the stutters start again? And then eventually the stuttering just gets worse and everything starts disconnecting.

I'm sorry, that's definitely frustrating. I had hoped the updates would clear things up. I use multiple speakers in my groups too, so I can only imagine how rough it is to have them struggling like that. It's an odd thing to try, but have you tried setting up a second group with the same speakers minus one? If that group performs well, add the last one back in and see if issues start. If so, remove a different speaker to see if it causes things to level out again. Then repeat the process until each one has been swapped out and back in. I would just like to know if it's a case of the total number of speakers or possibly a single device that's introducing an issue into the mix.

I've tried removing certain devices from groups and trying that, but I think I need to start from scratch and work upwards one speaker at a time. Over the last few years it has gradually got worse the more speakers I've added so it's always lead me to believe that it's too many speakers, but then I see on the forum here people seem to have no problem with twice the amount. I think I have about 16 in total. Anyway, I'm going to try creating a new group and start adding them one by one. Let's hope I find something. I find I'm listening to music less and less and we can't have that.

I've revisited the Google search and although I've seen people talk about this stuttering on groups before.. I saw that someone has somehow changed the devices from 2.4 to 5ghz, and discovered it fixed the problem instantly, but I don't see how as you can't do such a thing? It's not something you can change anywhere in any of the settings.

I did a test of the mesh within the home app.. and we're back to "weak connection". Haven't seen that in a while. I really struggle to understand how the mesh connection quality changes when the points never move? Anyway, I unplugged one of the three points in the house and low and behold things seem to be working better. Did another test of the mesh and we're now back to "good connection". Without any movement of any of the points.

It is still stuttery but better. I can't imagine the improvement lasting forever though. I can't run the house on just 2 points either as the garden is now pretty unreachable. I'm going to try and move them about but it all just seems a bit ridiculous.

The guidance and troubleshooting for the google mesh system says that the points need to be within 2 rooms of each other, but when I do that the devices can't decide which one they want to connect to. And I think that is really the root of this stuttering problem. You can't force them either can you? To specific points? Like I have a speaker that is right next to one of the points but it chooses to connect to one that's 4 rooms away, and stutters because of it. How can a mesh system be so unusable?

To answer your question about forcing devices onto a specific point, no, it's not possible to manually assign that. I had the same issue as you where the Chromecast in my master bedroom was connecting to the point downstairs rather than to the point right in the same room. I experimented moving that basement point, and eventually removed it. It turned out I was running more points than I actually needed in the end. I don't know that it's the same for you here, but maybe try moving around your points a bit, focusing primarily on the point it's connecting to that's placed afar.

The mesh network will do its best to route traffic for the best possible connections, but there can be a lot of unseen factors, such as interference. I know this has been a long process to get this sorted, but it sounds like you're starting to narrow in on an explanation for things.

I had a long live chat with someone from Google the other day. I sent him some feedback code that he managed to run a diagnostic on and told me that the main point (connected to the modem) - it's "mesh link was broken". I asked him if that was a hardware or software thing.. but he couldn't say. Anyway, he said that because the main point is where all the magic happens we should swap it with one of the other points, so I did...

However, and pretty much at the exact same time he closed the chat... I did another mesh test, and sure as eggs is eggs we were back to weak connection on both points again. I've been getting into the habit of doing a mesh test before I try and play music, and sure enough ... When the connection is weak, the music doesn't work. At no time between getting good or weak connection on a mesh test have I tried moving the points. They switch from weak to good and back to weak without them moving. I actually found another thread on here that I saw you assisting with about this.. weak connection with the mesh regardless of where the points are. And all that stuff with the Google guy on the live chat seems to me to be just rubbish. Not only did it not fix the issue, but it's now worse than before and I can only seem to get music playing on 1 or 2 speakers at a time.

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