Tag: Solwise

Article – From the horse’s mouth

4G as an externally-mountable USB modem can bring more reliable mobile broadband in to your boat for a large area of the shoreline

Solwise UK

Product List

All prices here cover the cost of the equipment and include VAT and delivery within the UK

PATRIOT tube-shaped network adaptors

PATRIOT-4G 4G/LTE USB modem (GBP£70.63)

WL-PATRIOT-USB 802.11g/n Wi-Fi USB network adaptor – 5dBi antenna  (GBP£43.81)

Panel network adaptor – highly directional

WL-USB-ODUPANEL-12DB 802.11g/n Wi-Fi USB network adaptor – 12dBi antenna (GBP£40.94)

Travel Router

WL-USBWIFIRPT-3000 USB WiFi Repeater (Travel Router with USB and Ethernet WAN) (GBP£52.98)

Previous Coverage

Solwise offers a two-piece Wi-Fi repeater for caravans and similar applications

My Comments

A use case that Solwise are continually targeting as I have covered before is to be able to bring a reliable Internet connection in to your caravan, campervan / motorhome or boat while you are on holidays or living in these vehicles.

This has been through the approach of a separate USB Wi-Fi network adaptor which can be plugged in to your regular computer and mounted outside your vehicle or craft. This is to work around a common issue with caravans and campervans where the metal housing can attenuate the RF signal necessary for the Wi-Fi connection to work and can be aggravated if you are in a campground or caravan park and are located far from the main facilities buildings where the infrastructure necessary for the venue’s public-access Wi-Fi is located.

Then there is a wireless travel router with a WAN (Internet) connection provided by a USB or Ethernet connection, working in a very similar manner to the typical “Mi-Fi” or travel router where it creates its own network for your devices. Here, you could connect up a Wi-Fi USB network adaptor such as the ones listed above or connect to an Ethernet-based setup such as what Hyperoptic is offering in a few of London’s marinas.

Let’s not forget that they are also offering a 12-volt “cigar-lighter” power adaptor as an accessory for GBP£2.84 that allows you to power the travel router and the USB modem or network adaptor from your vehicle’s or boat’s battery. They are positioning this adaptor for those of us who run our motorhomes, caravans or boats from 12 volts rather than having access to mains-voltage supply.

But Solwise have taken things further by offering a 4G/LTE USB mobile-broadband modem that can work with most of the mobile-broadband services. Compared to the typical “dongle” USB mobile-broadband modem, this device is equipped with a stronger antenna and RF front-end and is designed to be mounted outside your vehicle or craft. For boaties, it is rated at IP66 which could allow it to survive most boating use including heavier seas.

The travel router that Solwise is offering will require a firmware update available for download from their site so you can set it up as a two-piece “Mi-Fi” mobile-broadband router. This has opened up the travel router’s appeal to people living in narrowboats or travelling around in campervans or caravans and avoiding caravan parks.

The PATRIOT “tube” modems and adaptors are designed to be anchored on to the vehicle or craft using various hardware kits available through Solwise. These range from a suction-cup kit suitable for temporary installs through “jubilee clips” or hose clamps that wrap around pipes to U-bolts that can be anchored to mobile TV antenna masts.

The approach outlined here with all this equipment is that you install one of these USB modems or USB Wi-FI network adaptors on the outside of your vehicle or boat. Then you run a 5-metre USB cable to within that vehicle and connect it to the USB-equipped travel router that is listed here. The travel router will create a local network useable by many devices within the vehicle or vessel and share this using 802.11g/n or Ethernet technology.

Here, Solwise are continuing to answer the highly mobile user’s needs for a highly-reliable mobile network setup by using two pieces of equipment connected to each other rather than you buying a Mi-Fi or Wi-Fi range extender which uses its onw RF abilities and not-so-great integral antennas.

Solwise PL-1200AV2-POE HomePlug adaptor combines HomePlug AV2 MIMO and 802.3at Power-Over-Ethernet in one device

In 2013, Solwise became the first to offer for the UK market a “homeplug” that could work “best case” with a HomePlug AV500 segment and provide power to Ethernet-connected devices “over the blue wire” using the 802.3af Power-Over-Ethernet standard.

Now this UK-based network-equipment supplier have raised the bar with a Power-Over-Ethernet “homeplug” which works to the HomePlug AV2 MIMO 1200Mbps standard. This high-throughput standard offers a more robust powerline network link highly suitable for multiple-building setups like this example or small business and community organisations using HomePlug technology for temporary or semi-permanent networks in traditional business-grade premises. It is facilitated by use of all three wires (phase/active/line, neutral and earth/ground) of the standard AC plug to transfer the data along with the other improvements associated with high-throughput, robust data transfer.

Power Over Ethenrt concept

But wait, there’s more! This GBP£74.78 device doesn’t just provide Power-Over-Ethernet power through its Gigabit Ethernet port according to the baseline 802.3af standard but to the high-power 802.3at Power-Over-Ethernet-Plus standard. This can allow for multiple-band multiple-radio access points answering to 802.11ac standards, highly-powerful access points or IP videosurveillance cameras that can yield high-quality pictures.

This Solwise device could allow for a two-piece HomePlug AV2 access point setup with this ceiling-mount 802.11ac 1350Mbps access point (GBP£71.40), this ceiling-mount 802.11ac 1750Mbps access point (GBP£118.36), the “smoke-alarm” 802.11n 900Mbps access point (GBP£70.14), the IP55-compliant (weatherproof) outdoor 802.11ac 1200Mbps access point (GBP£175.24) or the IP55-compliant (weatherproof) outdoor 802.11ac 1750Mbps access point (GBP£186.66).

Perfect for this kind of setup

As well, the Solwise HomePlug AV2 Power-Over-Ethernet-Plus adaptor  could facilitate surveillance of your outbuildings like your garage where the classic car is being kept, the shed where you have those precious tools or the barn where your livestock are being kept when you team it with this traditional-style IP66-compliant (weatherproof) “bullet-style” 1 megapixel standards-based infrared-capable IP camera (GBP£164.92).

The fact that this Solwise “homeplug” combines HomePlug AV2 MIMO and 802.3at Power-Over-Ethernet Plus opens up a lot more possibilities for what both these technologies offer.

Article – From the horse’s mouth

Solwise

IP-W30AP product page

My comments

Solwise have released another of the wall-mount wireless access points which are initially pitched at the hotel and bed-and-breakfast trade. But in their sales copy, they were also pitching it at those of us who want a neat installation for that extension access point in our home network.

The IP-W30AP access point can create an 802.11g/n 2.4GHz dual-stream Wi-Fi segment and also has an up-front Ethernet socket. It connects to the host network using a rear-mount Ethernet socket and is powered by 802.3af-compliant Power-Over-Ethernet. As well, there is an RJ11 pass-through telephone socket so you don’t have to have a separate outlet for your landline phone.

But, to cater to today’s people, they have provided a USB charging socket for use with charging smartphones, external battery packs, Bluetooth headset adaptors and similar gadgets. This would be able to work at 500mA which would satisfy overnight charging of most of these gadgets but wouldn’t work well with tablets like the iPad or just work in a way to avoid compromising these devices’ battery runtime.

As for this device’s power supply needs, Solwise have you covered with a power injector or, as I have covered before, you could bring this access point on to a HomePlug AV500 segment with their Power-Over-Ethernet-capable “homeplug”.

Being pitched to the hotel installation, this device can support the sophisticated VLAN setups with multiple SSIDs mapped to different VLANs. On the other hand, it doesn’t have the ability to support WPS-based “push-to-connect” device enrollment – this would be something you would have to do at your home network’s main router. As well, they could make available a simultaneous dual-band variant that can exploit the 5GHz band either to 802.11n or 802.11ac standards.

For home network users, this device would come in handy as an extension access point for installations where you are wiring for Ethernet and need to bring Wi-Fi in to the “other part” of the house. This is more so with those houses that implement thick walls or foil-lined insulation where the Wi-Fi wireless network wouldn’t perform properly. Similarly, this would work well for that “guest-house” bungalow or similar building where you are wanting to “go the extra mile” and wire for Ethernet as part of establishing a multi-building home network.

Article

Great gadgets: Solwise antenna and wifi hotspot | John Norman’s Blog

From the horse’s mouth

Solwise

Wireless 11n USB CPE with built-in 12dBi antenna GBP£41.08

Solwise Wireless USB repeater GBP£47.75

System total GBP£88.83 VAT and delivery to UK included

My Comments

There are those of you who use a caravan, motorhome or other similar recreational vehicle as the mobile holiday home and are likely to spend time at caravan parks or campgrounds rather than set up somewhere like at the beachfront or the bush. Increasingly these places are offering a public-access Internet service with Wi-Fi either as part of the package or for an extra charge, in order to make themselves relevant to the “switched-on” traveller.

But the problem with gaining access to these Wi-Fi services from your caravan is that your site may not be in a position where you can gain reliable reception of that service. Similarly, the vehicle’s metalwork will also play a part in attenuating the Wi-Fi signal that gets in to the van.

You may think that the typical Wi-Fi range extender may cure this problem but most of these devices have integrated antennas which may not be all that “crash-hot” when it comes to picking up the Wi-Fi network’s signal properly. But the clever people at Solwise have partnered a pair of devices that can bring the Wi-Fi network in to the caravan wherever you are.

The first device is a USB Wi-Fi network adaptor with a 12dBi panel aerial. This single-stream 802.11g/n device can be mounted outside the vehicle or building and connected to a regular computer via its USB socket using a 3 metre USB cable. The second device is a dual-WAN 802.11g/n wireless router with a choice of Ethernet or USB serving a wireless-broadband modem for its WAN / Internet service. But it also is able to work with the abovementioned USB Wi-Fi network adaptor effectively as a router.

On the LAN side of this router, you have a separate Ethernet connection along with the Wi-Fi network offered by the device. This earns its keep not just with smartphones and tablets but also with devices like network-attached-storage units, printers or DLNA-capable media devices because this means that you are not dealing with having to log on to the venue’s public-access Wi-Fi network to run these devices or share their resources through that network.

Being a two-part setup, you you can locate the network adaptor outside the vehicle and plug this in to the router’s USB port to effectively “bring in” the Wi-Fi service. It is also designed to support the “quick set-up quick tear-down” requirements that these kind of travellers would need and there are accessories available through Solwise to provide a semi-permanent mount for the USB network adaptor.

According to the screen shots in the manual, there is apparently a “bridge” mode to allow the router to be an extension access point that plugs in to your Ethernet or HomePlug AV(2) wired backbone. This could come in handy at home for extending that wireless network but I am not sure how this is implemented fully, something which could be written up on further.

It sounds like Solwise are fielding another device which would have some utility value when it comes to having that small network how you like it.

Article – From the horse’s mouth

Solwise

http://www.solwise.co.uk/wireless-cadisense.htm

CadiSense

Product Page

My Comments

There have been some trends taking place to make the home network become part of in-home health care. One of the previous trends was Fujitsu using a digital camera like what is equipped in a smartphone or Webcam as a tool for measuring your pulse. Similarly, another company implemented a set of urinalysis “control sticks” that can be assessed not through a reference chart on the packaging but by a platform smartphone app that uses the phone’s camera to read these sticks.

Now a device has been launched in the UK through Solwise which uses a wireless temperature sensor to provide continual body temperature monitoring using the home network. This device, known as “Cadisense” implements a wireless temperature sensor that attaches to the patient’s nappy (diaper) or undergarment and touches the lower abdomen to measure the temperature. This device sends these temperature readings to a plug-in network bridge that connects to your home network via Wi-Fi or Ethernet, with the network bridge keeping a long-term record of these observations that are taken every 30 seconds.

The data can be viewed on a Web server integrated in the network bridge that is accessible through the home network or via a remote link like what is used for most network devices that implement “remote access” or “cloud” functionality. The “dashboard” Website hosted by this Web server is optimised for viewing on a regular computer, tablet or smartphone and has the ability for regular-computer users to download the observations to the hard disk as a CSV file to import in to a spreadsheet application or email to their doctor. There are also the mobile-computing apps that work tightly with the iOS and Android platforms

At the moment, this device is focused towards observation-based clinical temperature measurement but shows that this concept can be proven beyond this application. There is a current limitation where the Cadisense temperature sensors can only work with the supplied network bridge but it is made up for the fact that the network bridge is a “3-way” wireless network device that can be either a Wi-Fi client bridge, a Wi-Fi range extender or an infill Wi-Fi access point.

For that matter, Cadisense are on a good wicket with their design because they could work this platform for a lot of in-home health-care applications including “ageing at home”. For example, their network bridge could come in to its own with the Ekahau Wi-Fi Pager Tags to be the core of a network-based “emergency-call” system that is a necessary part of caring for older people.

Once a system like this is built around industry-accepted standards like Z-Wave or Zigbee, it could mean a lot more for at-home health care and wellness applications amongst other applications like security and home automation.

Article – from the horse’s mouth

Solwise

Value – Solwise HomePlug 500AV with Power over Ethernet – PL-500AV-POE (Product link)

Previous coverage of similar devices

At last HomePlug AV and Power-Over-Ethernet in one device

My Comments

Previously, I had written an article on this site about Asoka releasing a HomePlug AV-Ethernet bridge that provides power to connected devices using the 802.3af Power-Over-Ethernet technology. This adaptor, which is available to fit US power sockets, can use the one Ethernet cable to power an access point, VoIP telephone, IP camera or similar device as well as being a data conduit to that device.

Now Solwise in England have raised the ante with this class of device when they offered one that plugs in to UK power outlets and sold to the UK market. Here, the PL-500AV-POE implements the HomePlug AV500 technology rather than the HomePlug AV technology on the powerline network side of the equation. If the HomePlug segment is based around HomePlug AV500 hardware, it could lead to higher data throughput speeds which would benefit high-resolution IP surveillance cameras or 802.11n access points.

The same company ask GBP£59.80 including VAT for this device but they are not short on Ethernet devices that can be powered from this “homeplug”. Here, they have a single-band 802.11g/n dual-stream access point that looks like a smoke detector for GBP£73.25 or a dual-band dual-stream 802.11a/g/n access point for GBP£189.14. There is also a basic “dome” IP camera for GBP£144.02 or a traditional-style auto-zoom camera for GBP£167.17 for a country that places emphasis on video-surveillance.

What I see of this is that at least some more manufacturers are raising the game for HomePlug powerline devices that integrate 802.3af or 802.3at Power-Over-Ethernet technology in a way as to underscore the fact that the powerline network and the Power-Over-Ethernet technology complement each other rather than exist as competing technologies.