@dblair22, great that the connectivity issues have been resolved with the update, but I’m actually really interested in your feedback here (I am at least partially to blame for both the wizard that Heltec is shipping and the one in the HaLowLink 1).
- you mention that you had to enable a DHCP server on your Extender for devices connected to its 2.4 WiFi to get an address. As long as the extender is connected to your AP, you shouldn’t need a DHCP server here. Can you confirm that this is still an issue?
- I’m concerned that you’re running two DHCP servers on the same network (I think?). Though this is certainly possible, it’s easy to misconfigure things this way (e.g. having the wrong gateway or handing out conflicting IPs, since by default the server is set to authoritative), and by default if OpenWrt detects another DHCP server on the network it will not bring it up (see the force parameter). This could lead to some strange behaviour, and may even have affected your connectivity earlier.
- You mention that it would be good to have more options in the Extender wizard; at the moment, this doesn’t really exist, because in the normal mode of operation we assume that you don’t access the Extender directly at all (i.e. the default ‘bridge everything’ configuration is sufficient). It’d be great if you could explain the different settings you want on the Extender and your use case.
Thanks!
I’m probably mostly to blame for the misconfiguring (duplicated DHCP server). I manually setup the client as an Access Point (then turned off a bunch of settings). This is because of my experience using the Heltec wizard UI (which is clearly Morse) and the documentation Heltec includes.
After I reset the Extender, I used the Mode button and setup was simple and solved the issue.
Changing the Extender 802.11b/g/n (radio0) SSID/Password through Quick Config isn’t completely clear. What I like in the Heltec UI is when you select “Enable Access Point” you are prompted to set the 2.4Ghz SSID. A section in the Owners Manual (under “3.2 Using your Extender” , “5.6 Connect a non-HaLow Wi-Fi device to a HaLow network” or “Troubleshooting”) on changing the Extender SSID/Password might be helpful for beginner users.
"Changing your Extender Access Point SSID:
- Quick Config → Wireless-> 802.11b/g/n (radio0)
- Set SSID & Password
Lastly, details on getting a device from an AP-Extender config ,into a Mesh (EasyMesh or 802.11s) are pretty sparse in the Owners Manual. I assume that’s to keep beginners (like me) from getting into too much trouble in the Mesh settings. The manual could be clearer and use some of specific language in the owners manual. From my tinkering, my understanding is the Access Point needs to be setup in Mesh first :
- Setup Access Point as MeshControler in the Wizard.
- Press Mode button to initiate Paring
- On the other device, when in Extender mode (aqua) press Mode Button. This device will become a “HaLow Mesh Agent”
Question: Is there a difference between HaLow Mesh Agents and Halow Clients? Using the Mode button devices always become Mesh Agents, and not Clients. I’d like to minimize network hops for the furthest HaLow devices, so setting them as Clients would exclude them from the mesh system and their path would be Client->Mesh Agent-> Mesh Controller, while also having some Clients directly connected to the Mesh Controller. Like is shown on the Wizard EasyMesh Controller diagram.
Thanks - that’s great feedback. We’ve definitely run across some of these issues in internal usage as well, and one of the big problems we tend to have is the level of existing knowledge people bring (often a little knowledge is a dangerous thing - e.g. experience with our other products!).
Some thoughts:
- Heltec’s wizard is based on the one in our evaluation kits (e.g. EKH01, EKH03), which is designed to be more flexible than the HaLowLink1 and also has to deal with only having one ethernet port (which makes it more easy to lose your device).
- Re the 2.4 SSID, that’s been the subject of a lot of internal discussion. For instance, we could easily make the Extender copy the 2.4 SSID off the Access Point when doing the initial setup. Some arguments against this are that it will make the qrcode on the device stop working, that a particular deployment of IoT style devices would usually connect only to a single Extender, and when doing initial testing it’s often useful to know exactly which device you’re connected to. Definitely worth explaining better in the manual, though, as you mention!
- Re the mesh features generally: absolutely, the manual is far too minimal. Our devices are technically capable of this, but for the HL1 we were not sure whether to remove it entirely to keep the product more focused; as it stands, it was put in, but not enough effort was made to explain it in the manual. We are in the process of releasing some ‘app notes’ which talk about how mesh setup is done on the HL1 as separate documentation.
Question: Is there a difference between HaLow Mesh Agents and Halow Clients? Using the Mode button devices always become Mesh Agents, and not Clients. I’d like to minimize network hops for the furthest HaLow devices, so setting them as Clients would exclude them from the mesh system and their path would be Client->Mesh Agent-> Mesh Controller, while also having some Clients directly connected to the Mesh Controller. Like is shown on the Wizard EasyMesh Controller diagram.
If you’re using EasyMesh, it will create a mesh in a star topology which is essentially just a lot of APs/STAs, and should organise itself in the most efficient way. i.e. in terms of performance EasyMesh Agents should be almost equivalent to HaLow Clients. If you look at the Quick Config page on an Agent, you’ll see that the HaLow device has two interfaces (AP/STA).
If you’re using 11s Mesh, the story is a bit more complicated. Theoretically the mesh should still self-organise in an appropriate way, but since every device is making its own choices there’s probably more chance of something going wrong. Also, due to the way 11s mesh works the potential throughput would be reduced in most cases. As you’ve noticed, when you connect an Extender to the mesh for the first time it will configure itself as a mesh device, so it you did want it to act as a ‘normal’ client you should go to Quick Config after its associated and change the mode of the interface from ‘Mesh’ to ‘Client’.
My recommendation would be to test to see which suits your deployment if it’s not too hard to redo.
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