No wifi signal in garage, but phone gets healthy download speed

[eustachio]

I've searched the forums on this, but haven't seen a specific resolution of this issue.

We live in an apartment complex. Our garage is beside the apartment, but since we got our M3 I've never been able to see our home wifi from the car, it never shows up on the car when it scans for networks.

I just tested with my phone, and at every point in the garage, I am getting signal and ran a speed-test, and get from 5-20mbps, depending on location.

I've considered buying a mesh network, but given my phone is getting signal, is there something else I'm missing?

Appreciate any wisdom/ideas anyone has to offer, thanks

 

[jjrandorin]

you could try pulling into your parking space the opposite way (if you park head in, try backing in). The antenna is in one of the side view mirrors I believe so try flipping its location by changing parking direction.

Also, are you connecting to 2.4ghz or 5? Are you sure that upload speed on your phone is actually over wifi? Try taking a laptop into the garage and sitting in your car, and then running a speed test from that.

Alternatively, also try sitting in your car with your phone (if you dont have a laptop). Laptop is better test since it wont have cellular (unless you use a convertible device that has cellular data as a laptop, but thats getting in the weeds).

 

[eustachio]

Thanks for the pointers and ideas.

I'm sitting in the garage, typing this on laptop on the same wifi network.

I also tested it in the car with data connection turned off on phone.

Speed is not great, but it does work.

(edit: I will try parking the other way, i.e. backing in, although that way the mirrors will be further from our router)

 

[towndrunk]

Tesla wi-fi reception is much worse (and fussier) than a cell phone. The antenna is in the driver-side mirror.

 

[camalaio]

If I remember correctly, the Model 3 can only connect to 2.4GHz networks ("older"), not 5GHz ("newer"). Since you're in an shared building, if your ISP set up your router, they may have only set it to use 5GHz since there's less "noise" on that frequency but not all devices support it.

Check with your router or ISP if you have separate 2.4GHz / 5GHz networks. You could probably figure out which you're using from the phone or laptop as well somewhere in the WiFi settings.

 

[srs5694]

When I first got my Model 3, it didn't show my home network on its list of WiFi networks. In fact, it showed nothing but my solar panels' WiFi "access points" (that aren't really access points); all my neighbors' WiFi networks (including a smart fridge somebody has) doesn't show up in the list. I was, however, able to connect by entering my WiFi network's name manually. I only get about 2 bars' strength, but that seems to be enough -- I can ping the car reliably from computers on my network (although the latency is horrible and variable), and I've never had a problem downloading a firmware update. I suspect that Tesla is hiding networks with signal strength below a certain threshold from the list that's displayed on the screen. Thus, I recommend you try entering the WiFi network's name manually before you invest in new hardware.

 

[towndrunk]

After connecting to wi-fi, you can go to Speedtest.net and check your connection. If it's too slow, your Tesla will not connect.

 

[eustachio]

Thanks all. I took the car out of the garage to run some errands and on my return pulled it within an inch of the wall, opened garage and apartment door, and it detected my network for the first time, enough signal to download an update veeeery slowly, but it worked!

Interesting that it only connects over 2.5ghz. It seems very intolerant of weak connection, my phone was getting much better speed, possibly connected to 5ghz.