Smart Home Appliances do make the promise of making our lives easier, and convenient, with better control over our appliances. All of this with the help of our good old Wi-fi! Everyday life feels super duper comfortable with everything at your fingertips. But, despite all of these promises, these smart home appliances end up giving you a headache with a dash of frustration with their old wi-fi communication issues.
These wi-fi issues end up giving you the opposite experience of smart home appliances – difficult, inconvenient, and almost no control over the appliances. The fridges stop sending temperature alerts, washing machines stop responding to remote commands and whatnot. All of these issues are because of simple connectivity problems. In this blog, we are going to try to understand why these wi-fi communication issues happen with smart home appliances.
The Basics: How Smart Appliances Use Wi-Fi
Smart home appliances depend on your wi-fi network to perform their connected functions like sending notifications and receiving commands through our smartphone apps. Wi-fi helps them get into a two-way communication channel with your home networks. They continuously exchange data with each other so that their smart capabilities keep on working. But, when this communication breaks or gets interrupted, these ‘advanced features’ which make your smart home appliances special, turn into normal, ‘not-so-smart’ appliances.
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Distance and Physical Barriers: The Common Culprits
Physical Placement Challenge
The most common reason for wi-fi communication issues is where you are keeping your smart home appliances. Large appliances like refrigerators, washing machines, ovens and others are usually kept against the walls or in corners. Pretty normal. But, many times, they are also kept near things that interfere with wi-fi signals. For example, things like metal surfaces, thick walls, and other electronics can disturb or make it difficult for wi-fi signals to reach your smart appliances.
Kitchen Interference
Our kitchen has a lot of smart machines like ovens, air fryers, microwaves, chimneys and many others. Sometimes, these appliances, other metallic appliances, countertops and even water lines end up becoming the reason for wi-fi communication issues. Along with these, the distance between your wi-fi router and your smart appliances can be too much. This can weaken the signal strength, especially in bigger homes where sometimes the appliances are in basements or garage areas.
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Network Crowding and Bandwidth Limitations
Device Competition
Nowadays all homes have a lot of smart appliances that compete with each other for bandwidth. Adding to these appliances, there are also smartphones, laptops, TVs and other devices that need wi-fi. All of this competition between the devices can end up in network crowding where a lot of devices and appliances are using wi-fi signals at the same time. This competition becomes more brutal during peak usage time when a lot of them are actively using bandwidth.
Connectivity Requirements
Usually, smart devices don’t need a lot of bandwidth to do basic functions. But what they do need is constant connectivity. When your wi-fi network traffic gets a traffic jam, these appliances start to struggle to maintain a stable connection. If this happens, you will notice that your appliance starts to respond late or gets completely disconnected from wi-fi.
Interference from Other Devices
Frequency Band Conflicts
Did you know the 2.4GHz frequency band that is commonly used by smart appliances can get easily interrupted by other household devices? Appliances like microwave ovens, cordless phones and Bluetooth devices that we all have, have the same frequencies! So, when these appliances are in use, they end up creating an electromagnetic interference that disturbs wi-fi communications. Hence, the wi-fi communication issues.
Neighbouring Network Impact
It’s not just your network that can cause problems in your smart appliances, but it also could be your neighbour’s wi-fi. Yes, that can happen. If you are living in apartment buildings or a populated area where a lot of networks are close by, then there can be some sort of interference. It can result in an irregular connectivity issue or poor performance in your smart appliance.
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Software and Firmware Problems
Managing Updates
Most of the smart appliances rely on their complex software systems to manage their wi-fi communications. But, if there is outdated firmware, software bugs, or other compatibility issues with the router settings, then it can cause connectivity problems. Usually, manufacturers regularly release updates to remove all the issues, but a lot of users forget or don’t know how to update the devices’ software.
Router Compatibility
These wi-fi communication issues can come up if you have recently changed your router’s settings or security protocols. This changes the way your smart appliances connect to the network. When the routers get updated or if the settings are modified, then the devices’ software also needs to be updated. If not, then they stop being compatible with your wi-fi.
Power Management and Sleep Modes
Energy Conservation
To save energy, many smart appliances enter sleep modes when they are inactive for a long while. Although this feature helps reduce power consumption, it can also cause wi-fi communication issues. This transition between active and sleep modes sometimes doesn’t handle the network connections smoothly. This results in wi-fi disconnections or late responses when the appliance wakes up.
Network Security Settings
Security vs. Connectivity Balance
Nowadays wi-fi networks take a lot of safety measures to protect unauthorized access. No denying the fact that these security features are very much needed. But they can also interfere with smart appliance wi-fi connectivity. All the complex password requirements, MAC address filtering, and certain encryption protocols are not fully compatible with all smart appliances.
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Solutions and Best Practices
Network Optimization
The first step is to optimize your router and change its place if you can by using wi-fi extenders or mesh networks and making sure that there are clear lines of sight between the router and appliances. This helps reduce the physical barriers and the limitations of distance. Regularly do software updates for both appliances and routers to maintain continuous compatibility and security.
Network Configuration
You can also create a dedicated network or VLAN for smart appliances. They decrease any sort of interference from other devices and improve overall network performance. You can also get help from the appliance repair service to identify and solve specific issues.
Conclusion
Smart appliances having wi-fi communication issues are extremely common. It can come up because of a lot of reasons from a simple physical interruption, to software complications. As the owner of a smart device, you have to understand the common causes and take steps to improve the wi-fi connectivity. You never know what might work for smart appliances – changing your router’s position, updating the firmware or simply optimizing the network settings. And if you are not able to figure out what’s wrong with your smart devices, then call Tech Angels. We will help you figure out and solve wi-fi communication issues so that your appliance is back to giving you convenience and good performance.
