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reducing wifi latency. any ideas?

Posted: Mon Feb 26, 2018 12:37 pm
by 16nine
apologies in advance if this topic's been addressed elsewhere, I searched but no joy

has anyone setup their BCS-462 using peer-to-peer/ad-hoc wifi? I don't need internet connectivity nor *distant* remote control (I'm always in the garage when brewing) just a reliable, lag-free interface. if so, is it straightforward)? any tricks involved? I don't want to direct ethernet connect the BCS to a PC - too many hazards

I'm obviously a network neophyte and would appreciate some guidance. or even a response of "I've done that..." would be great, then I'll know it can be done & will go figure it out

Thanks!

Re: reducing wifi latency. any ideas?

Posted: Wed Feb 28, 2018 5:25 pm
by jward
I connect my BCS using a mini WiFi repeater bridge. It's powered by USB. Connects to the BCS using a short ethernet cable. The BCS connects just fine on power up. It was a bit of a pain to get the cheap Vonets unit I purchased configured but it has been great once I got it working.

Re: reducing wifi latency. any ideas?

Posted: Thu Mar 01, 2018 11:02 am
by 16nine
jward - thanks for the positive feedback. do you peer-to-peer directly to the vonet bridge, or is the data path from the bridge connected to an infrastructure router?

Re: reducing wifi latency. any ideas?

Posted: Fri Mar 02, 2018 8:11 pm
by jward
The bridge connects the BCS to the single router that everything else connects too.

Re: reducing wifi latency. any ideas?

Posted: Sun Mar 04, 2018 11:00 pm
by oakbarn
If you are in Range and do not need the Internet, just any router will do. I have mine connected to a wired wifi repeater connected to my main router (internet). I could have as easily just hooked up a router, plugged the BCS to the router, and connected to the router with my windows pc normally. Sometimes when I travel, I take an old router and my BCS to play with it. You do not need the internet for the most part.

Re: reducing wifi latency. any ideas?

Posted: Mon Mar 05, 2018 9:45 am
by 16nine
oakbarn - THANKS!

Re: reducing wifi latency. any ideas?

Posted: Wed Mar 07, 2018 8:20 am
by 16nine
Solved the peer-to-peer connection (used an old WiFi router) however the latency is still the same, typically 4-sec. guess that's just how it is

Re: reducing wifi latency. any ideas?

Posted: Wed Mar 07, 2018 8:26 am
by JonW
4 second latency? You have a networking problem somewhere.

When running my app that talks to the BCS, I update status nearly 3 times per second. Usually 300-400 ms update time.

Re: reducing wifi latency. any ideas?

Posted: Wed Mar 07, 2018 11:33 am
by 16nine
entirely possible

I'm using an [older] Netgear WGT 624 v2 802.11b/g 108 Mbps wifi router, setup in auto 108mpbs mode, to which the BCS-462 is connected via ethernet

The BCS is set on factory DHCP mode. I can connect peer-to-peer & get the BCS main screen, etc from several clients including an I-Pad, a dell notebook (XPS M140) and a Lenova Tab 4-10

also, my "latency" measure is based on how frequently the Data Log updates. it seems to take 4-5 sec to refresh the temperatures (which are set to update at 1-Hz) and the screen refresh rate is device independent (I shot a 30-sec video of the screen but the video file is just too big (60+MB) to email)

your latency seems to be 10x less than mine, any ideas on improving this would be worth some good homebrew

Re: reducing wifi latency. any ideas?

Posted: Wed Mar 07, 2018 12:18 pm
by JonW
Well, now we're talking apples to oranges. The datalog shouldn't be used to measure latency. It's designed to only update periodically. In most cases, you don't want to use 1 second intervals on it. If you're tracking a temperature over time, you'd want to use something of at least 1 minute or more.

My fast polling is done using the BCS API which is the same thing the web interface uses to poll data. Standard web poll & UI update is what should never be at a 4-5 second refresh. Usually 1 or maybe 2 seconds.

If you start a process on your main page and you have a timer running, do you see the screen update in near real-time showing the running clock? If so, then you have no latency issue. If you see the clock jumping in several second increments, then you may have a latency issue.