Hello all I have a Max BR1 Pro connected to a Puma 421 external antenna
With all wifi settings on max, and 2.4ghz on, also while being in literally the middle of nowhere zero wifis for miles, I barely get 50 feet away from the truck and signal is really bad but workable, at 70 feet, its gone, this happens with the Max BR1 Pro and a Transit and with both antennas (included or external puma).
No matter what antennas I use or device I use i just cant get any good signal, is this normal for these units?
I’m 1 more customer complaint away from just ditching the wifi on these units altogether and installing a separate rugged AP that I know reaches at least 150ft without issues
Anyone have any idea why the signal is so bad and if this is normal?
I’ve noticed similar performance on our Max BR1 Pro fleet, and we have quite a few of them. I have a range of different antennas spanning Peplink to Panorama to other brands, and the performance for Wi-Fi just isn’t that great. I am beginning to wonder if the mW output is just not there. One of these days I will pull out my spectrum analyzer and do some real comparison testing during some of that “free time” that people talk about.
I just tested it by putting one of the old (read, really good) pismo based HW1 Ruggeds, on top of the truck and sure enough 250ft out my laptop still can connect and use the starlink internet perfectly so its definitely something with the mobile units, I doubt its the antennas, I put the rugged antennas on the max units and had basically no difference in signal.
I did some experiments switching the operating country to South Korea, that gets me 2 extra channels (so the drone remote controls don’t get interfered as much with the Peplink signal) and a slight boost to signal strength that the laptop does pick up (I get up to 400ft range on the rugged), but sadly our RS3 GNSS station does not want to connect to the Peplinks when you switch the country, even if its using the standard 1-11 channels, so there’s something that the Peplink sends out on the beacons that tells the devices that its on another country format.
And before anyone wants to hang me for using other country channels…
A: I’m trying to troubleshoot, its not like we leave this permanently on in human inhabited areas
B: 90% of our work is in the middle of nowhere Appalachia, surrounded by hills with not a human around for 20 miles in any direction, so I can guarantee you no one is being affected by this except maybe some annoying ticks and lots of deer
On another note… anyone have successful experience with Peplinks and 3rd party WiFi amplifiers, Not repeaters - actually amplifying the RF that runs through the router antennas?
Seems like that would be another option to fix this problem, out in the middle of nowhere, signal power interference shouldn’t be an issue so they might actually work but were never tried them and heard nothing but bad reviews on them.
