Our DoorBot has Been Decommissioned: Part 3
For the several weeks we’ve had the new “Extended Range” Doorbot installed in place of the original device. The only apparent difference between the two is the addition of a short external antenna to enhance the Wifi connectivity.
Happily, the new unit does seem to stay better connected to our WLAN. In the past I was not comfortable evaluating the behavior of the Doorbot+client application given the questionable connectivity. At present the network connection seems sufficient to examine the behavior of the system as a whole.
I have the DoorBot client application installed on a variety of devices:
- Nexus 4 Android mobile phone (Me)
- Nexus 5 Android mobile phone (Mrs)
- Nexus 7 Tablet (2013)
- 4th generation iPod Touch
- iPad with Retina display
The fact that I’m using so many devices may be a little unusual, but I would expect that many families will use 2-3 devices, most likely a couple of cell phones (his & hers) and a tablet. Although a family with kids may well have more than this.
The problem with using a less than common Wifi AP is that a manufacturer can say, “we’ve never heard of that make/model” and hope that they are thus absolved of any possible requirement to help troubleshoot the situation. Not that the crew at DoorBot took that stance, but I’ve heard it plenty in prior situations.