quadrophenic wrote

Hi,

Looking for a little bit of advice. I currently have an EAP 225 V3 mounted on the ceiling in my garage. It serves 1 ring spotlight cam just outside the garage door and 1 ring doorbell pro. However I am really struggling to get good signal strength from either device despite them being no more than 10ft away from the AP. The problem is probably the garage door blocking the signal.

I was thinking about replacing the 225 with a 225-Outdoor due to its external antennae. Does the outdoor offer better range/signal strength then the standard EAP 225? Or will both products struggle to broadcast through the door?

the spotlight cam operates on 2.4ghz only, the doorbell pro can use either but normally connects on 5ghz.

Tbh I have been slightly disappointed by the range in general of the EAP 225, even plasterboard walls seem to limit its range quite significantly. However that is for a different discussion. :) 

 

Thanks

Hi,

Both EAP225v3 and EAP225-Outdoor support Mesh function now. You can deploy a EAP225-Outdoor outside the garage and connect to EAP225v3 via wireless connection.(Just like RE product)

Hi Jonas, thanks for your reply but mesh wont help me here. I would need to run POE to outdoor anyway so I might as well run it back to the switch.

My question was more whether the EAP225-Outdoor has a better range/signal strength than the normal EAP225?

Personally, I see no difference with the included antennae. Make sure you are not too close to the garage door. I feel the same as i want a little bit more range and sometimes I feel I made a mistake choosing TP-Link. Ubiquiti AP-AC-LR was better.

Thanks for the replies. 

Yes I was considering actually doing an outdoor mount but would have to mount it pretty high and me and heights dont get along very well. haha

@steve_togo Interested to know the logic behind mounting further away? I kept moving it closer in the vain hope of improvement. There are many holes in my garage ceiling now so a couple more wouldnt hurt I suppose.

yes its the attenuation when being really close. @quadrophenic before you go about drilling holes, Please make sure of the following. These are all my rough numbers based on experience

1. If mounted on the ceiling and height is more than 10 ft. mount it slighly off center away from the garage door. Like a ft or 2 away from the center and away from the direction of the garage door (towards your home side).

2. If below 10 ft move towards the garage door like a ft or 2 from the center.

3. If mounted on the wall use the diagonal something like a motion sensor.  

Let me know how it works out.

Questionmark wrote

Hmmmmmmmmm...

 

I took a quick look at the specs, and I was very surprised to find that, the outdoor unit listed as less powerful spec-wise.  

 

Outdoor:

2.4GHz: 2 × 3dBi
5GHz: 2 × 4dBi

23dBm, max. (2.4GHz)
22dBm, max. (5GHz)

https://www.tp-link.com/us/business-networking/ceiling-mount-access-point/eap225-outdoor/#specifications

 

Indoor:

2.4GHz: 4dBi x 3
5GHz: 5dBi x 2

≤24dBm(2.4GHz)
≤22dBm(5GHz)

https://www.tp-link.com/us/business-networking/ceiling-mount-access-point/eap225/#specifications

 

That being said, the outdoor unit is weatherproof, and could actually be mounted outside.  Then you should be able to get good reception.  That's probably what I would do in your situation.

Those specs mean nothing. Specs on the AP side is useless as the weakest link is your client. The antenna Dbi just changes the pattern of the signal, while the power is limited. All companies by law are required to limit their broadcasting strength, the AP can send signals to a far more distance than the clients can send back. That always makes people think that there is a problem with AP while infact the problem is with the client.

People do see differences with AP's, that is due to the fact as to how well the antennae's are engineered and placed inside. The design plays a crucial part rather than the numbers here.

Thanks guys, I will give this a go and let you know how i get on. Thanks again for the advice

Well I have ended up buying an EAP225-Outdoor, still located inside the garage and the 2.4ghz coverage seems improved. I think the ability to direct the antenna helps. 5ghz coverage remained very similar.

My logic was that if I buy the outdoor I can still to mount it outside if I can ever be bothered :) 

The other EAP225 has been deployed somewhere else in the house via mesh until I can get it cabled up. 

The only difference I have noticed between EAP225 and EAP-outdoor is that when I enabled mesh on the controller my wifi speeds (as reported by wifi sweet spots app) dropped on the normal EAP. I expected this due to the need for wifi backhaul in mesh config. However the EAP-outdoor experienced no such drop, still reporting 800mbps. Max on the indoor eap is around 600mbps