WH3080 Signal Strength

[robynfali]

To the other owners here of the system.

Anyone finding problems with signal strength with this machine?

I live in a 160 year old, granite walled house, BUT the system is on the roof, and the display WAS in the front top bedroom, in a straight line between the two were only a plasterboard wall, and a slate roof, a distance maybe of 45ft (15m), now with my old fine offset station, exact same place, no problems at all.

The new system, i have had to replace initially the solar sensor (faulty), then the entire system went down, and fair's fair to Signatrol, they replaced the lot without quibbly and extremely fast too (pat on the back to them), put the new system up today, and I had no signal from the outside being received to the display. I moved it to another room (downstairs and back) so its about 20ft (6.5m) away, and its all working perfectly.

I thought these things were rated to 300ft open line of sight, and granted yes a lot less through walls etc, but not by this much. I find it strange that the previous setup (same machine basically, same frequency) had no problems, but this one does. It's no great problem being moved, but it does mean i have a machine running upstairs now purely for a webcam.

[GraemeT]

Yes Rob, I had the transmitter fail after water got in the first time it was rained on. I opened it up and dried out the components, but range was reduced to about 3 metres.
Sadly the mob on ebay I bought it from seem to have vapourised and Fine Offset in China told me they won't deal with consumers wanting less than about 500 units, so Caveat Emptor applies...

[robynfali]

It is wierd, i am not sure it's "failed" as such, but its not as good as its predecessor with the signal. It's working perfectly in every respect apart from that. I know i have to take an old house with granite walls into account, but I think the distance it has to be at is a little daft!

[steve]

but its not as good as its predecessor with the signal

Does it operate on the same frequency as the old one? I'm sure I've read here from those who know about these things, that some of the allowed frequencies are better than others, as far as reception through obstacles is concerned.

[robynfali]

Yeah Steve, same as the old one 433mhz, is what it says on the box anyway

[dpmiller]

No problems here since opening the receiver and dangling the antenna wire out the back of the case; a few dead periods previously. The antenna doesn't appear to be tuned to 433 (23cm), maybe someone can advise on increasing or cutting the length for better performance.
in my case it's only 25ft or so, but my loft is insulated with that aluminised bubblewrap stuff...