Just wondering if any other Remote 3 users have their wi-fi constantly failing:
Any time I start an activity, all wi-fi entities stop working after 15-30 minutes; attempting to control them gives the “device not responding” error. Only rebooting the remote fixes it.
This happens whether “Prevent sleep” is enabled or not; if not, the “no wi-fi” toolbar indicator turns off 5-7 seconds after waking up the remote, but it still can’t control wi-fi entities.
(Bug report filed here.)
Keep WiFi channel below 12 and do not allow automatic channel change. WPA3 is not supported. On my WiFi it is very stable. I have a recent FritzBox system which is extremely popular over here in Germany.
Ralf
Wi-fi is a Deco mesh network on channel 6 with WPA2 and no auto-switching.
If the wi-fi indicator in the R3’s toolbar means anything, then the remote thinks it’s connected, but fails to communicate, which leads me to suspect it’s a driver or hardware issue.
Mesh systems are known to cause problems with the remote.
I’ve got my remote using a Deco mesh and haven’t had a single WiFi error. I have an Ethernet cable connected to the hub, so you could give that a shot to see if it helps with the problems you are experiencing.
Are you using static IP addresses? By no auto-switching I assume you mean that the connection is tied to one AP in the mesh, is that correct?
I use the FritzBox-Mesh system and don’t have any proplems yet.
FritzBox is popular here in Germany.
I too have experienced a number of problems that I think WiFi connectivity is at the heart of. I have often seen (even on newest software) what you described as the remote showing the “Connected” icon but when I look further into the WiFi settings, it doesn’t know it’s own IP Address.
My “solution” was to tell it about both my personal and guest networks and that seemed to help some (but not solve it), by allowing it to jump between those two networks (even though they connect to the exact same physical router and have fully the same functions. But that isn’t foolproof either. Forcing it to disconnect and reconnect (using the Settings→WiFi on the Remote itself) “solves” it for a short period but it’s not great.
And, no matter what I’ve tried, I get a ton of dropped commands where it forces me to acknowledge that a command didn’t go through before it will send any others. So effectively, yes I’m having problems too, but no solution feels stable/reliable to me either. It’s interesting some people are saying theirs are reliable when mine is nothing that I’d apply that word to.
I’m now experimenting with different settings for the device on the Deco mesh system; I’ve turned off “mesh” (so it should only connect to one AP and stick to it), and forced it to 2.4GHz (disabling 5GHz). I should know in a few days if that helped or not.
One thing I’ve noticed when going into the wi-fi settings on the remote is that its signal can sometimes be very weak with only 1 “bar”, much weaker than it should be considering proximity to the AP. Other times it’s fine at 3 steady bars.
I have a unifi network and one of the APs is literally within 10 feet of where I was setting up my remote and dock. The dock would connect and it would be happy. The remote, always had issues. I would ‘wake’ the remote, get the no network symbol and would just wait.
Then when it would connect, it would act like the AP was a mile away.
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With this little device, I would hard wire connect to it as my WAN. It has one LAN port and it’s wireless. So, I connect the LAN port to my dock and then wirelessly connect to it for the remote. It has not been an issue since.
In regards to the Home Assistant integration, I’ve connected that via the Nabu Casa link and it’s been rock solid. I now love my remote 3 as it just works.
I have multiple AP’s in my setup. This seems to cause problems with the wireless stack on the remote. It always seemed to disconnect and connect which caused problems talking to the dock etc. I have now created an SSID pinned to a single AP and that seems to have fixed all my issues.
I have 5 access points in my house. Not once have I had an issue with connectivity on my Remote 3. My guess is that a lot of issues occur when the docking station isn’t using ethernet. I like to keep physical connections whenever possible.
Same amount of AP’s and the dock is wired, Still had issues until locking it down to a single SSID on a single AP.
4 APs, dock is on ethernet, but the dock doesn’t affect the remote’s wi-fi.
Since locking the r3 to a single AP (disabling mesh networking for it), and forcing it to 2.4GHz, it’s been three days without losing connection, which is a record. So far so good!
I can confirm: Using a Fritz.box mesh network with 4 access points I had very bad issues with network reconnectivity after inactivity: Integrations would not reconnect, iR commands would not send (because missing connection to Dock), start and stop sequences of activities would fail at different stages.
The issue even seemed to mess with the Bluetooth connection to a Fire TV but this might be unrelated.
I then added another Fritz.box that is not part of the Mesh and sends another SSID and since connecting to that network no more connection issues at all.
On Discord another user “itcorner“ confirmed that he has no more issues after creating a new SSID on a single access point in his unifi network.
I created a new issue in bug-tracker for this.
Additionally I found that the battery lasts much longer since changing to the “one Access Point WiFi”… it now only consumes 20-30 percent of battery over the course of 3-4 hours where before it went down 15-20% each hour
I have the same issues, since the start (around half a year now), remote 3 is virtually useless as a result. I have 3 TP link AP’s (two eap 670, 1 eap 650), normal mainstream stuff, millions have these AP’s. All 3 wired to main switch, dock 3 also wired to switch. AEP’s managed through TP link controller software (Omada)
I’ve tried:
mesh on/off (no result, but since AP’s & dock are wired to switch mesh on/off not really relevant).
connection 2,4ghz or 5gh. Does not make a difference.
fixed channels (separated) for each AP, no difference. Also not with low channel number (8) on 2,4ghz.
fixed IP for remote 3, no difference (clients on my network tend to receive same IP anyways when IP setting is dynamic)
limiting the remote 3 to one AP, no difference.
creating an additional SSID with only remote 3 connected to it, no difference.
Restarting remote 3, no difference.
The only thing i have not done is completely isolating one AP (excluding it from the “Site” managed by the controller (and why should I, i have between 20-30 clients connected to those AP’s, from EUR 20,- devices to more expensive stuff and it all works flawlesly, always!!!).
So whatever I do I have the same problems, remote3 shows as connected (with connection duration of days), integrations (5) show as connected (always), I can connect to the configurator on remote 3 (virtually always) and remote3 shows it’s connected (3 bars). But operating the remote/integrations is just a disaster. No matter what I do, i get the some errors as others here: Command does not reach the device errors, code 400 errors (which i think is the same). Does not matter whether remote is coming from standby or not (wifi connected in standby is on, retry commands after wakeup 10 sec (max), 30 sec interval active wifi scanning).
The strange thing is that sometimes it all works, for say 15 minutes and then it stops working. Or suddenly commands are “delayed” (after which it stops working). The only correlation seems to be the wifi connection strength shown in my controller (remote3 always shows 3 bars). Remote3 seems to be functioning better when the signal strength is green in the controller (but most of time it is yellow).
To conclude, there are still serious issues with the remote 3 network stack, the update few months ago fixed some (before that i could not connect remote 3 for 90% of the time), but current state is still very bad, unacceptable for a EUR 300,- device.
I have a home Wifi network based on three Unifi access points and the R3 has been a useless device for me, because of real bad connection issues. The R3 lost its connection always and usually in 10-15min after which only a reboot cured it for a moment. Yesterday I configured a separate SSID for a single AP, which R3 + dock then joined. Now the connection seems to be still alive after 24 hrs, so maybe I can finally start using the R3 for its actual purpose.
To provide further feedback, i’m not sure signal strength is 100% the issue. I’ve now tested remote3 again appr. 45 mins in a row, while monitoring signal strength. In this 45 mins it worked around 95% of the time. Signal strength varied between -63dbm and -73dbm, with a few seconds going to -79dbm. In 5% of the time the remote3 “hangs”, it did not significantly “hang” more with signal strength around -63 and -69dbm or higher, it occasionally just “hangs”. In this 45 mins the display was continuously on (so remote did not go to sleep) and i was continuously scrolling (kodi). This only hanging 5% of the time is extremely good performance for me, unfortunately it is much worse most of the time.
Funnilly, while writing this, screen went black for a min, and when picking up again remote apparently was reconnecting with error messages “wrong network key”, which off course is bullocks. In the end this sorted itself out after a minute (still strange with wifi set to on during sleep).
If somebody knows how to fix the wifi indicator on the remote sometimes showing but most of the time not, i’m open for suggestions.
I’ll continue to test tomorrow. I now only have 13 devices online to my AP’s, while during the day it can be double. It seems likely for me now that remote3 network issues increase with many other simultaneous wireless connections on the same network.
Seems strange to me. I have 2 APs serving 42 wireless clients and no network related issues with my R3 even though its the furthest device away from my AP with a typical signal strength of -76db. I have it locked to one AP with a fixed IP and limited to the 2.4GHz band. Not sure what to suggest.
It is strange because it is not consistent. I now “solved” it by fully isolating one AP from my network. I created a separate SSID for the AP with only remote3 connected to it, this since my other AP’s can handle the rest. I now only have the ocassional delay with remote not sleeping, this is still weird but I’ll investigate that at another time.
Still silly that i have to dedicate an EUR 150,- AP to remote3 to get it working.