Charger connectivity

Hello
My charger (through the app) continuously loses its connectivity to my WiFi - there is a good mesh network at the charger with high signal strength. Each time I want to use the charger (through the app) it needs me to re-enter the wifi credentials. No other devices need this and I have lots of bluetooth connected devices that reattach to my wifi when they get back in range. My charge is fixed to the wall so this should stay connected

Hi Jon.

From the logs it looks like your charger has been connected to the cloud backend without interruption for a few days, so I wonder whether the disconnect you are seeing is actually between your phone and our backend? There is a small delay when you open the app while it contacts our server to fetch the current state of the charger.

I think my colleague Pedro has contacted you via our support channel, but to you or anyone else reading this in future, if you need a quick response from us the best way is to call us on 0800 395 007 (NZ) or 1800 959 377 (Aus).

Regards,

Tom

I’m having a similar problem, has only become apparent today. The app says the charger has lost its connection to the server. I think the charger is still connected to wifi because I can still control it from the app when I’m inside the house out of range of Bluetooth.

Oddly if I go close to the charger and try to configure the wifi settings again it fails. However according my Amazon Eero status page the charger is still wifi connected.

I’ve tried power cycling both the charger and the home network devices. No other devices are having trouble connecting to the internet or wifi. I haven’t moved any of the mesh wifi access points.

Hi Dan.

Updating the WiFi settings gets done over Bluetooth (since you’re usually doing it due to the cloud comms not working!), but all other configuration and reporting is done through the cloud. So even if the charger and phone are both on your home WiFi, they will communicate via our server rather than directly to each other.

Looking at the logs from your charger, it seems to have very intermittent connectivity. Do you know whether it was ever connected to the cell network or have you always had it on WiFi? We could try putting it back on the cell network to see if that has better results. The easiest way to work through this would be if you could call our customer support on 1800 959 377 so we can try some options with you ‘live’ and take some signal strength readings and things.

Regards,

Tom

Thanks Tom. I’ve always had the charger on Wi-Fi. (Only recently commissioned.) It’s never been on the mobile network – I wasn’t even aware this was an option actually. However, I have a router at the front of my house and the charger is only about 6m away so I find it hard to believe it’s a Wi-Fi signal strength issue. I also have a Wi-Fi gate controller further from the house which connects OK. Thanks; I’ll give customer support a call to further discuss the issue.

Just to close out this thread… the problem with the app’s belief that the charger had no Wi-Fi connection persisted even though I could see it was connected to the router (Amazon Eero app showed it was connected and I even confirmed the MAC address.)

However, I reconfigured the charger to use my iPhone’s hotspot, and then reconfigured it back to the home Wi-Fi and that seemed to clear the problem. Not sure why!

Thanks for letting us know - though that does seem a little strange!

If you start having trouble again, do call our support line to see if there’s any way we can diagnose it.

Regards,

Tom

Hi Tom, I did call in to support and they could see that they could see the charger was online via the mobile LTE connection which they said had been sporadic suggesting a coverage issue at the location (which network do you guys use Australia out of interest?) They could poll the charger OK suggesting it was connected even though the Evnex iPhone app was saying it wasn’t. So it might be an issue with the app rather than the charger itself. Anyway, I’ll let you know if it happens again.

We use a roaming SIM which should attach to the tower with the best signal strength, regardless of carrier. But we know it doesn’t always seem to make the optimum choice.