Podcast #994: Wifi Gremlins Begone!

On this week’s show we take a look at twelve things that the Jetsons predicted correctly back in 1962. Ring introduces three new automation devices and Ara gets to the bottom of his Wifi woes. We also read your email and take a look at the week’s news stories.

12 Cool Technologies “The Jetsons” Predicted For 2062 That We Have Right Now

This article is from 2019 

The futuristic family cartoon The Jetsons premiered in 1962. It was set 100 years in the future in the year 2062. We're over half way there now, but surprisingly, many of the technologies they predicted in the cartoon are already a reality, while others are maturing quickly. Full article here…

1. Video calls
2. Robotic vacuums
3. Tablet computers
4. Robotic house help - Not quite Rosie yet but enough to check the box
5. Flying Cars - This is a stretch but there is a flying car out there but nothing like what the Jetsons had. 
6. Smart Watches
7. Drones - apparently there was an episode in which Elroy was flying a drone.
8. Holograms
9. 3D printed food - we’re not convinced that this is a thing
10. The “PillCam” - this is actually a thing
11. Jetpacks
12. Flat Screen TVs

Amazon's Ring launches 3 new outdoor security gadgets

The outside of your Ring-powered smart home might get a little smarter thanks to the company's new outdoor smart plug, motion light and siren. Full Article here…

Orbi Wifi Discussion

As many of you know we both have had some wifi woes of late. Ara bought a new Linksys Velop ($300 for the router and one satellite) router which worked great for about two months and then it suddenly started acting up. Devices would randomly disconnect and the Internet would stop working regardless of whether the connection was wired or wireless. 

This led to the eventual replacement with a new system manufactured by Netgear (The Orbi RBR50 $330 for the router and one satellite) and all was good until it wasn’t. However, for the last five days (the longest period of continuous connection) all is good again. We think, for Ara’s house anyway, all the gremlins have been removed. The following are the steps taken to get there. A few of these steps only apply to the Netgear Orbi, but many apply to any router and may help you get more out of your wireless system.

1. As Mike stated in his email the Time server was changed. His recommended time server would not work with the Orbi RBR50 so time.nist.gov was used. The “Automatically adjust for daylight savings time” was initially unticked but later reticked with no issues as of yet. This tip is specific to the Orbi or other Netgear routers.
   1. Enable Implicit BEAMFORMING - They claim that this Boosts WiFi speed, reliability, & range for all mobile devices
   2. Enable MU-MIMO - “MIMO” stands for “Multiple-Input, Multiple-Output”, and it refers to the way bandwidth is broken up by a router and pushed to individual devices. This only comes into play if multiple devices are requesting say a Netflix stream simultaneously. Without it turned on it would delay one stream until the other has sufficiently buffered.
   3. Enable Fast Roaming - allows a client device to roam quickly in environments implementing WPA2 Enterprise security, by ensuring that the client device does not need to re-authenticate to the RADIUS server every time it roams from one access point to another. With two access points in the house this could have been an issue as devices continuously bounce back and forth between them.
2. Under the wireless settings the following were ticked:
3. The Netgear Armor Security was turned off - It was automatically activated for a 30 day trial. Ara noticed that it periodically scans the network and checks vulnerabilities of the devices on the network. Ara wondered if this caused some of the wifi automation devices to lose connection.  

After a reboot everything seems to work well except Ara’s Homekit devices. Then after struggling with rebooting his Philips Hue hubs Ara noticed that it was only the hue lights having an issue. What was puzzling was the fact that the lights themselves were not directly connected to his wifi network. The hubs being hardwired should not be having any issues. 

The Hue lights are based on the Zigbee protocol which uses the same frequency spectrum as 2.4GHz wifi. There was an article that said if your Hue lights are “unreachable” change the Zigbee channel.  There is a setting in  the Hue app that allows for his. Once that was done...Bam! Everything was and still is rock solid! 

In reality, that may have been the only issue as there are 25 hue lights, sensors, and accessories in Ara’s house.