Gen 3 Controller Drops WiFi daily

post by ox1574 on May 31, 2022

Has anyone had the issue where their gen 3 drops from the WiFi connection on a daily basis? My controller is installed near my networking gear and is about 5 feet from the access point it is connecting to. This has been going on for a few weeks now and is extremely annoying.

post by ox1574 on Jun 28, 2022

Someone else has to be having this problem. This is still occurring almost daily, and it is extremely frustrating. I’m running Ubiquiti gear for all of my WiFi AP’s, switches, and firewall if that helps any.

post by tmcgahey on Jun 29, 2022

My Gen1’s and Gen3’s have all been rock solid with wifi. What does your network look like? There are a few network gurus in here that might be able to help.

post by ox1574 on Jun 29, 2022

Not sure what you mean by what does it look like. It was using a single SSID with 2.4 and 5 GHz, but I just added another SSID strictly for the Rachio to connect on and locked it down to only 2.4 to see if that helps.

post by tmcgahey on Jun 29, 2022

Well, what type of equipment (routers, AP’s, etc.). @jseymour is a wizard when it comes to decoding network issues, so he might be able to help out. Not saying that there isn’t a chance that there is an issue with the Rachio unit, but in many cases, network issues play the more common role.

post by ox1574 on Jun 29, 2022

I mentioned all my networking gear is Ubiquiti…complete stack. @jseymour if you have any pointers and are familiar with the Ubiquiti stack let me know! TIA

post by jseymour on Jun 29, 2022

What kind of WiFi network. E.g.: Make and model of APs? Single or multiple APs? Traditional APs or mesh? If mesh: Everything backhauled with Ethernet? Repeaters? Dual-band? Shared SSIDs? Band-steering enabled? It may. Let us know.

post by ox1574 on Jun 29, 2022

Just two Ubiquiti Unifi AP’s U6-LR (long range) mesh setup, yes everything backhauled with ethernet, no repeaters. Main SSID that the Rachio was using before today is dual-band with band steering enabled. Early this morning I swapped it over to its own SSID with just single 2.4 band.

post by ox1574 on Jun 29, 2022

LOL right after I sent that reply I went to check my Rachio 3 and bam it’s offline. Always blinks the second light waiting for WiFi to be reestablished by using the iOS app.

post by jseymour on Jun 30, 2022

This is a guess born of nothing more than an impression I get from the complaints I’ve seen here, but, I suspect the Rachio 3 does not deal well with WiFi networks having the same SSID on both 2.4GHz and 5GHz and using band steering. Then… After mesh networks, my impression is the next largest number of complaints I’ve seen here have been from Ubiquiti users. ICBW. One thing some have found to be of help when using Ubiquiti APs is setting a DTIM down to 1.

post by kuryanthomas on Jun 30, 2022

Another setting to consider: turn off “fast roaming” and “BSS transition” for the IoT network. In the version 7 UniFi GUI, choose manual configuration and then uncheck those options and save. Ubiquiti networks can be really first class but the more APs/WLANs/VLANs you add, the more tweaking becomes necessary.

post by jseymour on Jun 30, 2022

One definitely wants to disable those enhancements for IoT WiFi networks. Fast roaming, in particular, can be problematical for many WiFi clients.

post by ox1574 on Jun 30, 2022

I manually set the DTIM to 1 instead of auto, but I’ve technically had the R3 locked down to only communicate with one AP which is only 5 feet away and not roam between the two.

post by jseymour on Oct 23, 2022

Yesterday I upgraded the AP in the home from an EnGenius EAP1300 to a newer EWS377APv3. Naturally, in the process, the SSID to which the Rachio 3 was connected “bounced” several times as I executed the replacement and made additional config changes in the new AP afterwards.

post by jseymour on Oct 24, 2022

I just saw our Rachio 3 do the weirdest thing. A final R3 WiFi connectivity test I wanted to do for a while was kick/ban the R3 on the Access Point to which it was connected and see if it would connect to the other AP. I wanted to see how it would handle seeing an SSID on a controller, but being refused connection.