The HaLowLink 1 is my first product from Morse. I purchased it as a backup to my current APs to have the ability for one HaLowLink 1 to cover my entire home without having to purchase three other APs. Unfortunately, the signal isn’t strong enough to go 60 feet to the furthest point in my house.
I contacted support and they told me to come here for help. I did search the community and couldn’t find any posts about this new product.
Any suggestions to increase the range/signal would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!
The HaLowLink1 lets you connect devices which support HaLow (~900MHz Wi-Fi) to your existing network. Because HaLow is a relatively new technology and there aren’t many devices on the market as yet, HaLowLink1 includes the ability to interoperate with 2.4GHz devices, but does not have increased 2.4GHz range (and in fact will likely have less range than your normal router/AP, as it does not have an external 2.4GHz antenna).
It sounds like you may only have a single HaLowLink1 and no other HaLow-enabled devices. If you want to let non-HaLow devices take advantage of HaLow’s range to extend your network, you’d need to purchase at least one other HaLowLink1. Your network would then look like:
For more information, see the ‘Extender’ section in Chapter 3 of the user guide.
Unfortunately, from your description, I think you may have purchased the wrong product for your use case. I suspect you should buy a standard WiFi ‘mesh’ system to help cover your house.
My apologies! Do let me know if there’s anything on our product or marketing pages that was confusing and should be clarified.
Thanks for posting this question in the forum! We’re aiming to support many new queries in this public forum so others can benefit from the responses!
To make full use of the HaLowLink1’s range, definitely follow @james.haggerty’s response to leverage the new 900 MHz radio! However if you still would like to improve the 2.4 GHz range I’ve added some more information below.
Formal testing of the 2.4 GHz radio showed it was capable of more than the range you’ve described. However, wireless range and throughput varies wildly in different operating conditions due to noise/interference and material penetrability.
You will find, for some devices, the performance of channels close to the “band edges” may be backed off for FCC compliance. For the HaLowLink1, using channel 6 can be beneficial in improving channel power and link budget as it is in the middle of the spectrum - giving you more range.
You can change the channel by navigating to the Advanced Config → Network → Wireless page in the Web UI for the HL1, and “Edit” your 2.4 GHz access point. The dialog will allow you to change the channel.
If you want to go even deeper, you may also want to look at the Channel Analysis in Advanced Config → Status. This will show you how busy a channel is at the current time. With many access points implementing automatic channel selection, you’ll often find the busiest channel even moves around!
I hope this helps! Do let us know if we can help in any other way!
Thanks for the response. I purchased this device to be backup to my mesh system. I could not find anything in the documentation that say the 2.4 will be very limited. I was not expecting the very long range but I didn’t see where the 2.4 only has an internal antenna and will not have any type of an extended range.
Thanks Dennis for testing the internal 2.4GHz antenna. Disappointing that Morse Micro doesn’t publish the 2.4GHz antenna gain/power/range in the documentation. Some of the cheaper dual band devices have internal connectors you can swap for external antenna’s. Once I get hardware, I’ll cut one open to check. Skip to 6:00 into this video https://youtube.com/watch?v=rj9GZQtFs8k
Edit: The above image shows 20dB TX-power, doesn’t show if you can increase the power (which is allowed in my region). I believe 20dB=0.1W, 30dB=1W ?
