I am planning on running my whole house (Theater, Music, Home Automation) via a set of Pronto PRO remotes. The fewer the better. I need very good wireless connectivity if that is going to be enjoyable/practical, and I need Philips to do something about the Pronto PRO roaming issue.
I have been playing with the WAP problem for over a month now and am taking the time to report on it as it affects everyone using the PRO since that is the only way it comunicates.
The House: 4500 sq ft.; single story; 10 and 12 foot ceilings; Cinder block outer wall construction; heavy use of rebar; Radiant barrier (aluminum foil) lines the roof rafters in the attic.
The living areas: Centrally there is a "Great Room" with 12 foot ceilings, all other areas have 10 foot ceilings; A Master bedroom suite, A Theater, and a Guest area. These 4 areas comprise the indoor living space. The Great room has the Kitchen, "Dining room" area, "Living room" area, and Liesure space. There is an oudoor area with a pool, a garage and a workshop, but they concern me less for the obvious reasons.
WAP Placement: The Great Room has a WAP in the ceiling but not centrally located; The Master Suite has a ceiling mounted WAP over the foot of the bed, the Theater has a ceiling mounted WAP over the seating aea.
Originally all three WAP's were identical - Legrande OnQ units at about $180/unit.
When the PRO starts up from a reboot it will lock onto the nearest WAP (best signal). From that point on it will not let go of that WAP, even after a reboot. The only way I could get it to switch to another WAP was to shut off the ones I did not want it to see and then turn it on. I rebooted the unit (power cycle) which was locked onto WAP-A while standing under WAP-B. The Signal strength was one bar, and it would not re-target it self to the WAP right above it. As I roamed around the house, the performance of the Pronto varied. I am using TCPIP communications exclusively (well that is all the Pronto has) but no extenders. I talk directly to networked devices. It varied from 3 bars to no bars. My portable PC generally gets about 5 bars as reported by a Linksys PCMCIA NIC
I have recently changed out the WAP in the Great Room to a commercial grade ceiling mounted unit from PakEdge. Performance has dramatically improved. With that the only WAP operating I get no less than one bar at any location in the house, and most of the time 2-3 bars of indicated signal strength.
My TCPIP code handles all conditons of signal loss (and when the PRO goes to sleep) recovering state when it wakes up or the signal returns.
Philips really needs to do something about the roaming performance of the PRO. Probably not in their best interest as the poor roaming perfomance will probably sell more PRO's. Crestron recommends to its dealers/installers that there be a Crestron remote in every room paired to a WAP in that room.
I recognize that changing the Pronto hardware (different antenna, more receiver/transmitter power) is probably out of the question. I suggest the following be inplemented as a very high priority item!!!:
Add a few properties to the Wireless widget such as current signal strength, current channel. The data must be available.
Add a few methods to the Wireless widget such as "disconnect" and "re-acquire" a WAP, but re-acquire the one with the best signal at the time of the command.
The Pronto PRO is what I want, I have owned almost every Pronto remote made. It is workling for me, but it can be improved with some simple software changes in the area of control of the radio.
Appreciate any additional comments ,as this is a key issue (IMHO)
Last edited by Barry Gordon
on August 10, 2007 21:52.
