FoxESS Community - Owners & Installers Forum

Hi,

First off, I'm not massively tech savvy, so apologise if I'm not posting in the right place.

I have a Fox 3.7kwh inverter (with 12 x 395 JA Panels) and everything was working fine, app was showing the data correctly and everything

Then one day my internet went off. Re-connected it, but nothing connected back up to the app on my phone, although the display on the inverter showed it to be working perfectly. The app showed nothing

Got the instructions out, connected up to the W-******* wifi on the dongle and entered 192.168.1.1 as it says and re-connected to the home wifi by clicking on it in the Wifi SSID box and entering the password

Hey presto, back up and running on the app

Only problem is, now nothing else in the house will work using the home wifi. Not phones, not game console, not laptops / tablets, ring doorbell, amazon fire, nothing. Sometimes does intermiterntly but in general nothing

Got the (several now) internet engineer out to look at it. No faults found. The last one who came out suggested looking at the channels that both the router and the inverter were transmitting from and both showed channel 11, so he went in and changed the router channel to number 5, and everything sprung back into life...........for about 10 minutes and then shut down again. On closer inspection, the inverter had jumped to channel 5 also, and not stayed on channel 11. He looked at the 192.168.1.1 and said he could not see a way of making the inverter stay "static" on the channel selected, so could not help (I'm lost here by the way). He even attached an ethernet cable from the inverter to the router and the same thing happened in that it followed the channel

Does anyone know why what the inverter is doing should be blocking all other devices. I'm guessing something changed when I re-connected after the initial internet outage, but don't know what

Can anyone help at all with any suggestions please, as we are stuck with what to do now

Thanks in advance

I've never heard of the wifi datalogger knocking off other devices as it's simply a client. I would continue to monitor and if it continues the LAN datalogger might be a better idea and hardwire it to the router.
What make/brand is the router?

Hi,

the router is Sky's own router. It doesn't;t have a make on it, but the model number is SR203

Then one day my internet went off. Re-connected it,

Emphasis mine - when you say "reconnected", what did you do? Was it just power cycling the router or did you do anything else?
As Will says, it's not really possible for a single client to completely stop all others from using the wifi unless it's broadcasting huge amounts of interference (which is not totally unheard of but seems pretty unlikely!)

Can you access the admin screen on the router, maybe with a laptop and an ethernet cable? If you do that, can you access the internet that way?

Hi Calum,

yes I believe that is what the sky engineer did, he accessed the router's admin screen as he showed me how to change the channel it was operating on. He changed it from 11 to 5 and everything just sprang back into life (ring doorbell, phones, amazon stick etc) which the likes of my phone & amazon etc I had been having to use my mobile data for months as nothing would download. Only lasted about 10 minutes and everything went down again. On checking, the inverter was sowing as jumped to channel 5 also

The engineer connected an ethernet cable to the underside of the inverter to the router, to try and see if hardwiring it would make a difference, but it didn't change a thing. Engineer said that unfortunately there was not much else he could do, as obviously he is sky and there is nothing wrong with the internet, the problem lies with the router, and he suggested coming on here and asking for advice

I'm just at a loss

With regards to the initial reconnection, when the internet briefly went off (last September) all I did was unplug the router at the mains and reboot it up. When I did this, it was the first time that the Fox app was not showing any data from the inverter. I then followed the instructions going from step 3 onwards, that is inputting 192.168.1.1 and finding my home internet in the Wifi SSID box and then the password for it. Everything came back up on the app, but that is also when the problems with the wifi started as well. I'm guessing this is the source of the problem, but not being tech minded, I have no idea what it is that has caused it

David

If you change the channel the router is broadcasting on, all devices will have to use that channel - that's how WiFi works.

The ethernet port underneath the router can't be used to send data to the Fox website, it only allows access to the Modbus function of the router. Is the data appearing in the Fox app / website?

Can you see if the other devices are showing as connected on the router, even if they aren't working? Do the devices connect to the Wifi but not work, or do they fail to connect completely?