Repeatedly losing and re-establishing link to external power sensors

[Cy]

Two of my external power sensors have been repeatedly (multiple times per day) losing their link and automatically re-establishing it some time later - usually within a couple minutes, sometimes hours later. This only recently became an issue without any configuration changes and the tags all have fairly strong signals the rest of the time. Nothing I have tried has made a difference:
1) Recharge them, even though the battery level is well over the usual point at which they would need recharging
2) Changing the tag manager mode (wider, narrower - doesn't matter)
3) Resetting states
4) Calibrating frequency offset
5) Even migrating all tags to completely new wireless settings

Any suggestions?

Thanks,

Cy

[fto...@austin.rr.com]

Hi Cy, 

I have had the same experience for years.  Have never determined a better, let alone best, combination of settings.  The controls that exist are no better than placebos - they're just buttons to push and settings to try.  

It would be nice to have a diagnostic tool that scans the wireless environment and suggests that a particular tag frequency channel is the quietest, or that a particular bandwidth works well for the current sensor distribution, etc.  Not sure whether anything like this is even possible with the current tag manager - it might be too dumb. If anyone has ideas for such a tool, I'd be happy to help develop it/test it/whatever.

Some sensors are simply unreliable.  They can be unreliable from day one, or they can degrade with age. Others keep working for years without any issues.  Once they get unreliable, you might as well toss them and try replacements.

Cheers,

Fred

[John Effland]

I'm sorry that you're having problems with your sensors.  I have had mine for over 8 years, with a few purchased recently, and have never exhibited the problems that you describe.  

I live in the country, so perhaps you are indeed suffering from radio frequency interference.  There are a few cheap ways to check the spectrum, and perhaps you can find an empty channel.   I see from here that the Wireless Sensor Tags use 20 kHz bandwidth channels in the 430 MHz range.  There are a number of cheap spectrum analyzers, such as the Airspy, but I don't know if they have the specs required to look at spectrum spaced just 20 kHz apart at 430 MHz.  

Best,

John

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Wireless Sensor Tags" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to wireless-sensor-...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/wireless-sensor-tags/cf9cbb4f-9e30-4c9b-b20a-d890debf522bn%40googlegroups.com.

[fto...@austin.rr.com]

Hi John,

Thanks for the quick response.  

It's always possible that I'm having interference issues.  We're located in a very low density retirement community (Hot Springs Village, Arkansas), so external interference seems unlikely, but will try to measure.  Just ordered one of the V4 RTL-SDR dongle kits.  Have used one before at another location just for fun and was amazed at how well it received aircraft and other transmissions.  Now I'm anxious to try one here for this purpose.  Maybe I can find a quiet or at least quieter frequency.

Two of six external power sensors stopped communicating simultaneously yesterday while they were all huddled under two layers of cardboard boxes about 20 feet from the tag manager.  Was doing a temperature calibration check at the time.  Tried every imaginable remote control to get them talking again and nothing worked until I power cycled their battery connections.  Then they came back to life, but they did not collect temperature data while offline or at least they did not upload it once back online.

Cheers,

Fred

[fto...@austin.rr.com]

Just lost another external power sensor that was purchased just a month ago.