InsightHome - Access via hardwire to router vs WiFi

Graham Parkinson · February 22

Hi

We are contemplating putting an InsightHome next to our inverter and batteries in our Powershed located about 100 feet from our house (due to Canadian regulations against having energy storage in a dwelling place, and the fact that our generators are in another room of the fireproof shed anyways). Having the hum of the inverter out of the house will be good too.

We are using a 600V charge controller so the PV voltage drop is only a few percent and 100 feet for the 120/240 VAC coming back from the shed isn't too bad either.

Our 5G/LTE based router has Wi-Fi in the house, but it doesn't reach that far outside.

Will there be any problem with accessing the InsightHome on the router's house Wi-Fi via a 125 ft shielded Cat 6 LAN cable out from our router to the Insight Home unit in the Powershed?

Is the hard wired LAN access via the router's Wi-Fi the same as as direct Wi-Fi to the Insight?

From my read of the manual all the above seems like it will all work, but just wanted to check or hear any advice before committing to this setup.

Thanks

SumPower · February 22

The maximum distance for network cabling is 300 feet (The typical rule of thumb for network cabling). So you will be fine with a CAT 6 cable.

I know nothing about the Insight Home. if there is a port for a network cable on it, that should be fine too.

Dave Angelini · February 22

Wired is always best. The offgrid mindset that the wired part of the router may still work fine when the wifi portion or the separate box downstream has failed. Yes! There is a separate port on Home.

There are also 2 different wifi modes on insight home and facility, Wifi direct and wifi station mode.
I can take my laptop to a clients home and go directly from my laptop into the power system even if the clients wifi is down or non existent. Very flexible!

Mtnsun · February 23

The wifi direct mode Is nice, I have insight Facility, my house is 250 feet away from the power shed, and it works inside one corner of my house (but not the whole house). The range is supposed to be 300 feet but going through walls effects the range. The insight facility is almost twice the price but in my situation it is nice to be able to view the system in my house directly.

Graham Parkinson · February 23

Good News - Thanks for all the reassurances!

Dave Angelini · February 23

Facility has 2X the wifi range of Home.

Graham Parkinson · February 24

Is the info available and access possible via hard wire internet cable the same as available via the direct wi-fi mode? That's what I couldn't quite discern from the manual.

In other words is it worth paying twice the price to get the Facility instead of the home if it allows direct WiFi from the house?

I thought that the direct mode is mostly for setup, we just ordered the Home today but could change the order at last minute if we needed to ....

Dave Angelini · February 24

It is all the same!

Facility is really for large systems that run out of xanbus bandwidth. Talking 4 XWP or clusters of 3 to 6 for 3phase and all the mppts. It does this with 2 separate xanbus networks that share data to look like one network. The 2x wifi was just a couple antennas to get the range up.

Graham Parkinson · February 26

Thanks Dave!

InsightHome - Access via hardwire to router vs WiFi

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