OpenSprinkler Forums Hardware Questions USB to power wifi

Viewing 6 posts - 1 through 6 (of 6 total)
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  • #35600

    paul
    Participant

    Hi

     

    I have purchased a few of these units now and used rj45 to connect but i need to use wifi for the next one.  on the distributor page openlab they sell a usb female A to male B connector  to power the wifi from the open sprinkler unit.  my understanding was these ports are usually un powered and are for connecting to not from ie a printer…

    http://openlab.com.au/shop/usb-female-male-b-converter/

    can we use one of these adapters to power the wifi bridge as is suggested?

     

    Thanks

    PK

     

    #35603

    Samer
    Keymaster

    Yes that is actually possible and should work just fine.

    #35933

    daniel
    Participant

    I tried hooking up the tp-link wireless relay using a usb type-a cable, female to female usb adapter and a usb to micro-usb cable.  It ran ok last night, but it seemed to be a bit haywire today.  The display was flickering a bit and went blank after a minute or two.  I tried restarting several times.  After removing the USB load, it seems to have cleared up.  Maybe the two cables + adapter drew a little too much current for the unit…  rj

    #35935

    paul
    Participant

    I set 1 up at the weekend using this method.  Will see how it goes.  First 2 units ran Ethernet third was harder so hopefully this wifi works.

     

    #35950

    Ray
    Keymaster

    While OS should be able to drive a WiFi adapter, this is not tested rigorously, and it depends on how much current the adapter actually draws in practice. When WiFi signal is good, this may work fine, but when WiFi signal is poor, the adapter draws more power and this may exceed the capability of OS. So my suggestion is to still use the WiFi adapter’s own power supply.

    #35966

    William
    Participant

    I had exactly the same experience.  As a matter of fact, the TP-Link began to interfere with DHCP and shut down my intranet.  I let this happen a couple of times to be sure it was  reproducible.  The issue seems to be that the TP-Link draws a lot of power, maybe more than spec.  I called TP-Link and a woman who sounded about 16 years old walked me through a flow chart that ended in having me cut the transmit power and retest.  Voila.  Cutting the transmit power solved the problem, unfortunately cutting the transmit power in my situation, defeated the purpose of using the TP-Link.  In the end, I ran an Ethernet cable to the opensprinkler and returned the TP-Link to Rayshobby.

    Can you cut the transmit power and retest?  It would be helpful to confirm my results.

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OpenSprinkler Forums Hardware Questions USB to power wifi