Develop Bugs

WiFi Signal Quality

Hi
I have just got my XDAIIs and the Wifi works, however the signal quality is poor i.e 30-40% and the TX rate is only 2M. This is with power save mode setting set to best performance and I am within 1 metre from the wireless router.
ANy ideas

mine is the same

What wireless router are you guys using? I've noticed it varies with different brands. At home I've got an Apple Airport Extreme and I get about the same as you guys, whereas at work we use 3COM wireless routers and at a distance of a few meters I get about 75-80% reception.
Dimitri

I'm using a 3com and reception is around 60% anywhere. Whether I'm stood next to it or upstairs and in the opposit corner of the house (i.e. lots of bricks in the way). It's not until I go outside and start walking away from the house that I get a sudden drop off.
In other words, I think the connection software is more at fault in how it reports the signal strength than the reception.

Real Wifi transmission rate
I read back a while ago here that the maximum transmission rate on the O2 xda II, not IIs, was limited to a throughput of 256K, eventhough reception was at 2mb etc, is this true for the IIs? This was was to internal systems of the xda etc, nothing to do with wifi card etc?

I've got a netgear and a buffalo and both are the same sort of reception

Thanks for the feedback guys.
I am using a Belkin WIreless router

Hi
Mines a Draytek 2600G complete with 2 high gain (5dBi antennae), same issues, poor wifi signal when not standing next to AP. Laptop with pcicma 54G card shows full signal at same location where XDA barely registers a signal.
This causes loads of problems with skype, which drops the call and takes the wifi connection with it (soft restart required to restore).
Nigel

Are you all using Bluetooth while trying to communicate with an 802.11 network?
Bluetooth and 802.11 both operate in the 2.4 GHz band, and because of Bluetooth's frequency hopping, it can seriously impair 802.11 performance.
Some devices with integrated Bluetooth and 802.11 have proprietary mechanisms to deal with this problem, but not all as it's not mandatory.

Hi
Nope, thought of that. Killed Bluetooth on handset, other bluetooth gadgets in house, other wifi stuff bar the AP and DECT phone, and I am not running the microwave!!
Same result, poor wifi range. Also tried with 3 separate AP's now same result each time.
Went to PC world this morning connected a couple of their demo IPAQ jobbies to their btopenzone AP, got the meters up and held mine next to ipaqs. Without fail, the IPAQ's were reading 3/4 signal and my XDA was barely registering a signal. Staff must have thought I was a nutter, but I wanted to prove the sh1te wifi issue to myself!
Nigel

Anyone got an SDIO wifi card that they can test with - i'd be interested to know now much better that performed.
Nigel

i'm sure it would perform mucho better. I get the 40% signal with my buffalo router... no matter where i stand. you'd think little things like this would have been discovered during the qa cycle.

I get a much better reception around the house with my XDA 2 with an SDIO sandisk Wi-Fi card than I do with my XDA IIs with built in Wi-Fi

I don't have a Blue Angel yet, as I'm waiting to see if many of the reported issues (like this one) get resolved. However, I have a few comments/questions/suggestions:
Does anyone here know where the 802.11 antenna is inside the Blue Angel's case?
Being a software engineer who develops device drivers for 802.11 hardware, I've worked with a fair amount of WiFi devices. Chances are, the problem everyone is experiencing with WiFi is almost sure to be due to a REALLY BAD internal WiFi antenna design. The antenna is either being shielded by something inside the enclosure or picking up interference from another component.
If it's possible to shut off the internal WiFi card, one way to test the above theory is to try an SDIO WiFi card in the Blue Angel. If anyone can try this, please post your results.
If we can get information about where the antenna is in the case, it might be possible to reroute the internal antenna, or (less desirable) attach an external antenna to improve reception.
In addition, improving WiFi reception will almost surely improve battery life as well as a side effect.
It amazes me that customers of a $900 device have to jury-rig solutions to so many problems...

I use an USB Wifi dongle by Asus, reception is good arround the house, even through a lot of walls

I agree with poster above wifi on blue Angel sucks
I have both Blue Angel and XDA2 +Socket SDIO, and there is no doubt that the Socket sdio XDA2 combo has noticeably better reception, having done tests (ie trying them both from a distant spot, XDA2 can maintain connection, XDA2s can't). I'm shipping the XDA2s back and waiting for the Mini/Magician. Reception is the key to this when trying to hop on random hotpsots in the streets...so sayonara Blue Angel, too bad though...
Also, FYI on XDA, speed limit is 256K, not 2mb, due to buffers etc. routers do not prefer either system and WEP works fine on both.

Has anyone managed to get the XDA2 and socket or sandisk SD wifi card working with a dling 54g access point namely the dwl2000ap+?
I've heard of a few issues with DLINK 54g access points and these cards?
Cheers

I have the SX66 / same as PDA2k but built like XDA IIs, I use the built in wifi alot but I also Have the SDIO Socket Card also and run it when a need longer distance. No conflicts of any kind that I have seen, works well with my D-Link Router but reception is not so good with built in.

Have a Linksys WAG54G 54mb, and have tried on Dlink 108Mb running both on mixed mode. One thing I will suggest that others have mentioned but cant be explained enough, as most people place their DECT phone next to their wireless router. There needs to be at least 2M distance between the two antenna's otherwise interference will kill signal dramatically, even on different channels.
With this said, have tried XDA Mini with combo wifi card, XDA2 with wifi card, and XDAIIs with builtin, and the power management turned off to give maximum power. Yes the IIs consumes the most amount of juice, followed by the XDA2, then the Mini.
On a quick scan, drive home using wififofum, with the 3 of them mounted on the dash, came up with the following results on drive to and from work.
Access points discovered
XDA2 - 78
XDAIIs - 89
XDA Mini - 82
I might also mention, that half of these have no encryption at all, or have left noobie default settings on routers - thanks guys ;-)
Overall like the IIs, except heats up too quick and loses battery life, especially using the wireless. XDA Mini rocks, just because the size and I can place the wifi card in when i need it, and the XDA 2 is just the stable toy I have had for the last 12 months.

where did you get the XDA mini?
I didn't know that it was out in the UK yet?

ftvs Wi-Fi issue

Is no one having Wi-Fi issues with this stick on this board?
There are 500+ complaints here
I couldn't even set up this stick on a Linksys ddwrt router.
I have 15 active clients connected not one of them had this many problems
I tried changing Wi-Fi channels rebooting multiple times, even set an open vap. It also seemed to drop the lease from my cable modem had to reboot everything. I'm only 10 feet from my ap.
I finally did get it "connected with problems"but menus sorta half load if they even load at all.
Anyone? Replace or refund?

Mine seems to work well with weak 2.4ghz signals. But it has severe issues even with strong 5ghz signals. bummer but it'll do

ziddey said:
.... it has severe issues even with strong 5ghz signals...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Try config your 5ghz WiFi signal to use a 20Mhz band instead of the wide 40Mhz band (if your router support this) then I think you will solve your WiFi problem with the Fire TV stick, the Fire TV square don't have this problem

lowbee said:
Try config your 5ghz WiFi signal to use a 20Mhz band instead of the wide 40Mhz band (if your router support this) then I think you will solve your WiFi problem with the Fire TV stick, the Fire TV square don't have this problem
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
My FTV never seems to catch the 5GHz signal (20MHz band) or it is very intermittent. It is not very far from the router (my iPhone catches it fine, even if it is further away). In a bizarre twist, when I connect to 2.4, it will show that one as having a very weak signal, but the 5 signal would show as very strong (while still connected to 2.4). So, then if I connect to the 5 signal, it will show the 5 as very weak and the suddenly 2.4 will show as strong (while connected to 5). And I can play that game with FTV all day long. Thankfully, I am wired using powerline adapters.
I have a ASUS 1900AC running DD-WRT.

Nope no 5 GHz router here.
I'm still running an original Linksys v4 ddwrt. It's been rock solid since I picked it up at a thrift store for $4/w PS.
I did manage to get it working pretty reliably.
I wrapped it loosely with about a foot of aluminum wire and zip tied it up instead of letting it hang. Whether the wire does anything or not.... It works
I have a few other android tv sticks, I know they usually have weak Wi-Fi, but this one would not even connect.
Installed kodi,addons,launcher hacks.....
Ran it all night without issues, actually runs kodi very well, so far so good.
I'm impressed with the kodi performance, runs as good, maybe better than my 808B+
Now? How do I run setup without an amazon account.

Mr.Rellik1000 I Can Really Use Your Help!!

Performance reduced drastically with MHL to HDMI cable

So I'm running limelight on my phone to stream my games from my PC. When just playing on the phone the input/video lag is almost imperceptible (like 5ms). When I plug my phone into my MHL cable to play on my TV the phone feels like it's running at 15 FPS and I see the network latency jump fro anywhere to 60-150ms.
I can stream from limelight and then cast to my chromecast and my phone's performance doesn't bog down, and I get maybe 15-20ms latency because of the chromecast streaming. I figured using an MHL cable would eliminate the added lag of streaming to the chromecast.
Why is it performing so incredibly poorly?

Bump.

Why is my Fire TV over WiFi much faster than on hardwired connection?

I can't figure this one out: Running SpeedTest.net on my hard-wired desktop computer which is a foot away from my Xfinity router, I'm getting around 175mbps download speeds. Then, running the Speed Test app on my Fire TV out in the living room (about 20' away), I get around 70mbps using WiFi. But then when I run a brand new 50' Cat-6 Ethernet cable straight from the router to the Fire TV, I'm getting around 30mbps. I don't understand why my WiFi speeds are over twice what my hard-wired speeds are, nor why the hardwire speeds drop all the way from blazing 175 to a relatively wimpy 30mbps. Any suggestions?

The Ethernet on the Fire TV is only Fast Ethernet (100 Mbps) so with overhead and all that, 70 Mbps is about what you should expect. The 802.11n on the Fire TV can theoretically hit 300 Mbps. Yeah... the latest wireless is quite a bit faster than older wired standards.
Update: Sorry, I mis-read. I thought you were getting 70 Mbps over wired. Yeah, 30 is a bit slow.

Is this with the gen 2 version?
I upgraded my first gen to the new one and spent all night trying to sort out buffering issues with kodi that I never had with the first one. I've always preferred using Ethernet to stream from the NAS. I thought what the hell to trying with WiFi, and all the problems completely disappeared. I now only use the WiFi and haven't looked back.
I suspected there is something seriously wrong with the Ethernet driver, although it's not a wide spread issue so perhaps I just have a dodgy unit.

Personal experience with gen 1, wifi always test much higher than ethernet. But in the rare instancrs that i have buffering issues, its the aftv on 5ghz, not the one thats hardwired.
I find these pretty tricky to diagnose. In some instances its my fairly low powered NAS with too many processes running. But Id say 90% of the time ethernet is better despite what speedtest says. Theres much less interference.

Thanks for the replies here.
This is for a first-generation Fire TV.
I'm wondering how accurate the SpeedTest.net app is on the Fire TV? I've taken the Cat-6 cable, plugged it into my computer, and still gotten around 170mbps on the computer using that cable. It's just when I plug it in to the Fire TV and launch the SpeedTest app that I get the slow speeds. So either there's an issue with the FireTV itself and its ability to handle high-speed Ethernet, or the SpeedTest app isn't accurately reporting the connection speed.
Klit75, are you suggesting that I might be better off going with a hard-wired ethernet connection, even though SpeedTest is telling me it's half the speed of WiFi?

Raymondo17 said:
Thanks for the replies here.
This is for a first-generation Fire TV.
I'm wondering how accurate the SpeedTest.net app is on the Fire TV? I've taken the Cat-6 cable, plugged it into my computer, and still gotten around 170mbps on the computer using that cable. It's just when I plug it in to the Fire TV and launch the SpeedTest app that I get the slow speeds. So either there's an issue with the FireTV itself and its ability to handle high-speed Ethernet, or the SpeedTest app isn't accurately reporting the connection speed.
Klit75, are you suggesting that I might be better off going with a hard-wired ethernet connection, even though SpeedTest is telling me it's half the speed of WiFi?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I wasn't sure where else to post this so figured I would post it here. I have the Fire TV 2 and my connection speeds are horrible even compared to my Fire TV 1 connected to the same router both by ethernet... On my Fire TV 1 I average 28-36 in speed tests. On the Fire TV 2 I can never get past 21 in speed tests, and on wifi the connection speed is almost non existent....I'm on a 50mps connection through my ISP... has anyone else noticed this on the Fire TV 2?
thanks

dk1keith said:
I wasn't sure where else to post this so figured I would post it here. I have the Fire TV 2 and my connection speeds are horrible even compared to my Fire TV 1 connected to the same router both by ethernet... On my Fire TV 1 I average 28-36 in speed tests. On the Fire TV 2 I can never get past 21 in speed tests, and on wifi the connection speed is almost non existent....I'm on a 50mps connection through my ISP... has anyone else noticed this on the Fire TV 2?
thanks
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Maybe it's your Ethernet cable
Sent from my HTC One_M8 using Tapatalk

tonyt3rry said:
Maybe it's your Ethernet cable
Sent from my HTC One_M8 using Tapatalk
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for the reply, but I tried different ethernet cables. Also it is almost unusable on wifi. Even my Fire Stick has a faster connection over wifi. I'm running the speed tests using Speedtest.net...It is connected to ethernet using a powerline adapter, but my Fire TV 1 was connected to the same powerline using the same ethernet cable in the same location and never had a problem. It would average between 28-38 consistently.

dk1keith said:
Thanks for the reply, but I tried different ethernet cables. Also it is almost unusable on wifi. Even my Fire Stick has a faster connection over wifi. I'm running the speed tests using Speedtest.net...It is connected to ethernet using a powerline adapter, but my Fire TV 1 was connected to the same powerline using the same ethernet cable in the same location and never had a problem. It would average between 28-38 consistently.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I got the fire TV 4k today when I had the stick I couldn't play HQ or HD streams on genesis now I can play HD and HQ with no stuttering or buffering now I'm using ethernet
Sent from my Amazon Fire 2015

tonyt3rry said:
I got the fire TV 4k today when I had the stick I couldn't play HQ or HD streams on genesis now I can play HD and HQ with no stuttering or buffering now I'm using ethernet
Sent from my Amazon Fire 2015
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes I have no problem with video playback, in Genesis or any other streaming app Netflix etc. Because even though I'm not getting the connection speed I think I should be getting it's still more than fast enough to stream HD content. I just want to know why the connection speed seems to be capped on the Fire TV 2. Like I mentioned when my Fire TV 1 was on the same tv, same powerline adapter same router everything the speeds were consistently between 28-38 mbps, where as the Fire TV 2 maxes out at like 17 mbps. That can't be right. If no one else is seeing the same thing on their Fire TV 2 I'm wondering if it isn't my specific device?

dk1keith said:
Yes I have no problem with video playback, in Genesis or any other streaming app Netflix etc. Because even though I'm not getting the connection speed I think I should be getting it's still more than fast enough to stream HD content. I just want to know why the connection speed seems to be capped on the Fire TV 2. Like I mentioned when my Fire TV 1 was on the same tv, same powerline adapter same router everything the speeds were consistently between 28-38 mbps, where as the Fire TV 2 maxes out at like 17 mbps. That can't be right. If no one else is seeing the same thing on their Fire TV 2 I'm wondering if it isn't my specific device?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm not sure maybe try connecting directly to the router and checking to see if the power line isn't causing it even if your ftv 1 had better speeds
Sent from my Amazon Fire 2015

tonyt3rry said:
I'm not sure maybe try connecting directly to the router and checking to see if the power line isn't causing it even if your ftv 1 had better speeds
Sent from my Amazon Fire 2015
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for the suggestion. Yeah that was gonna be my next step. Didn't really want to have to do that because of where my Fire TV 2 is. Think I'm gonna have to try it though, if for no other reason to rule out the powerline.
Thx

dk1keith said:
Thanks for the suggestion. Yeah that was gonna be my next step. Didn't really want to have to do that because of where my Fire TV 2 is. Think I'm gonna have to try it though, if for no other reason to rule out the powerline.
Thx
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah I've always wanted to go power line but seen that some factors can cause latency like how old the wireing is in the house
Sent from my HTC One_M8 using Tapatalk

tonyt3rry said:
Yeah I've always wanted to go power line but seen that some factors can cause latency like how old the wireing is in the house
Sent from my HTC One_M8 using Tapatalk
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah I have a few powerline adapters and they work really well. I did connect my Fire TV 2 directly to the router via ethernet and the speeds hit 61mbps....connected to the powerline i can't get more than 18mbps on Fire TV 2. However, when I connect my Fire TV 1 to the same powerline I get speeds of 28-38 and higher consistently. Although I'm not having any buffering issues on the Fire TV 2 I would like to know why the speedtest results are so low. Is it a driver issue on the Fire TV 2?

Multiple Firestick Issues -- long explanation necessary

I'm sorry that this post is long, but if I don't explain everything, the issues won't make sense.
1. I got a firestick in January of 2020. I'm using it on a older TV: Sanyo -- 10 to 15 years old -- does have 2 HDMI ports.
2. I have fiber optic cable, and the connection speed always says "Very Good."
3. For roughly six months, the firestick worked amazingly well.
4. Recently, it is usually slow. Takes too much time to bring up the show I want. It sometimes cuts away from what I'm watching completely, and returns to the homepage. I've tried 2.4 Ghz and 5 Ghz. Neither seems better than the other.
5. I've tried restarting and resetting the firestick. I've also uninstalled whatever applications allow for that. On others, I've used "Force Stop," and I've cleaned out the data and cache for all apps. I've turned off all things like "Data Monitoring," as suggested on other sites.
6. I've tried the ethernet adapter and cable, connecting the firestick directly to the router. This doesn't seem to help at all.
7. The firestick is close to the router, anyway -- about 8 feet.
8. The router, rented from the cable company, is older, but I don't know how old. It's a Calix Gigacenter, 844E-1, model 100-04015.
Additional Info: I live in a small apartment. My nearest neighbor, whose apartment is a bit larger, has a Roku, and a different ISP. Her cable is the "regular," meaning not fiber optic. She has frequent disconnection problems, and we both have very poor cell phone signals. Other neighbors have similar problems regarding their cell phones -- but I've been told that cell phone signals (or lack of same) don't have any connection with cables. Even so, it seems that this apartment complex exists in a twilight zone of some kind.
This apartment complex is within the city limits of a small town (population @ 8000)
More information that seems especially ODD to me: Other than the firestick under discussion, I have one more firestick (in the bedroom), a fairly new laptop, and a state of the art desktop -- all on the same network. The ODD part is, the firestick under discussion does better when all the other devices are running. (Wait. The firestick in the bedroom runs for only a short time at night; then it's off. So the living room firestick runs better when the desktop and the laptop are both running.
This seems the opposite of what it should be, but there you have it. Any ideas and help will be much appreciated. Thank you