One R4 Multiple Gateways

TurnipTruck

Greetings,

I have a system with one R4 that can be used in one building or another.

Any way to allow the R4 to go from one gateway to another without having to go into the webpages to allow joining each time?

Thanks.

jjames

No, that is what repeaters are for. You'd have one gateway and multiple repeaters - that will allow the R4 to roam.

TurnipTruck

Understood. The buildings are seperated by a distance that the repeater would not be able to brdige.

the8thst

I think you're out of luck.

You might be able to get the R4 to switch gateways with a reboot if they all have the same extended pan ID and the R4 is registered in each gateway.

I doubt that would work, but it is the only thing I can think of.

jjames

TurnipTruck wrote: »

Understood. The buildings are seperated by a distance that the repeater would not be able to brdige.

One R4 for multiple buildings?

the8thst wrote: »

You might be able to get the R4 to switch gateways with a reboot if they all have the same extended pan ID and the R4 is registered in each gateway.

Interesting idea.

TurnipTruck

It's taken from a main house to a pool house.

jjames

I'm actually running into the same exact problem as you. The R4 will not need to control anything in the house, but only near the cabana area.

You'd be surprised how far you could have the repeater and the gateway from each other. I read somewhere, that because there's no need to care about the cosmetics of the gateway and repeater, the signal strengths of the repeater is MUCH stronger than that of the an R4.

Just curious - how far are we talking?

rhargrave

Unfortunately, that is not possible. We talked about letting remotes roam between networks(as opposed to roaming between nodes on the same network), but there is a technical issues that limits the number of times a remote can change networks. So we decided to make changing networks a manual operation and let repeaters cover roaming.

jjames

rhargrave wrote: »

Unfortunately, that is not possible. We talked about letting remotes roam between networks(as opposed to roaming between nodes on the same network), but there is a technical issues that limits the number of times a remote can change networks. So we decided to make changing networks a manual operation and let repeaters cover roaming.

Speaking of roaming, about how far (open air) could you have a gateway and a repeater? We currently have have a gateway outside, and the R4 works great (diagnostics shows quality to be at about half) at 75-85 feet; does this mean we could probably throw a repeater at the 150 mark and still be covered nicely?

Just curious if they only need to meet halfway to work well, or could you go further? Didn't know if you guys have done any tests like this (I assume you have.)

rhargrave

jjames wrote: »

Speaking of roaming, about how far (open air) could you have a gateway and a repeater? We currently have have a gateway outside, and the R4 works great (diagnostics shows quality to be at about half) at 75-85 feet; does this mean we could probably throw a repeater at the 150 mark and still be covered nicely?

Just curious if they only need to meet halfway to work well, or could you go further? Didn't know if you guys have done any tests like this (I assume you have.)

Short answer, yes. Repeaters have a better antenna and more signal power than a remote.

Long answer, depends on the environment.
As a general rule of thumb, you can go about twice as far from a gateway or a repeater to another repeater as you can go from a gateway or a repeater to a remote. This rule of thumb works as long as their are no major changes in the signal path, like a heavy structural wall or something similar.