OK. You guys finally shamed me to take action. Out goes a knockout in the rear and a hole drilled into the wall cavity beyond which is adjacent to s comms box (telephone now but will add ethernet plug to it). Right now I just took the cover off the comms box and have the Ethernet cable along the wall 2 feet to a wall plug where the extender is.
Don't know. I have seen romex into the wall cavity. I can certain fill it with something and that is probably not a bad idea.
I agree that losing power due to a nearby lightning strike and having no backup due to a fried TEG would be bad. However...I haven't noticed any MOVs or gas tubes on mine, but I'm no EE.
Are you ethernet only then to the Tesla GW, aka no GW Wi-Fi connection configured in the app? That is how we are configured and have had zero issues with connectivity since then.
Prior to the series of AR storms this past month we essentially had just a few lightening events per year and they were usually small, scattered and cloud to cloud. This time we had multiple events that lasted more than 20 minutes each. I also had to go around and reboot cameras and routers the next day like never before. While I cannot attribute it directly to the lightening strikes in the area, it certainly was highly coincidental if not.
I think that it is hard to say for sure without monitoring equipment, but modern electronics runs on 3-12V at pretty low power draws for the most part, so it doesn't take much to cause a drop out or voltage imbalance sufficient to disrupt operations. Personally, I think getting robust resistance to EMPs, like nearby lightning strikes or coronal mass ejections (CMEs), is an onion like exercise; improve the shielding at the board level if you can, improve the shielding around the device (better enclosures, e.g. grounded metallic camera enclosures), shielded and grounded (grounded at one end only!) Ethernet cables (don't leave them coiled, or at least wind half the coil one way and half the other), surge suppressors on data (Ethernet) cables at both ends of long runs, computer rated surge suppressors scattered around the house, single point house grounding point, with adequate ground rods/Ufer grounds...
Great. Nuking the Wifi is IMHO the way to go.
If relocating the extender is the issue it could be you are now too far, interference from other devices, or a neighbor could have reconfigured their Wi-Fi net and is now interfering with yours, or .... We started with extenders, but over time have trashed all of them. I recommend people only use a Wi-Fi extender when hardwiring is not an option. While a little more work to install, CAT 5/6 cable is much more reliable and easier to troubleshoot and usually, a one and done solution.
relocation is not the issue now. I reset everything and started from scratch with the extender in a location that is <30 ft from the TEG. The extender has a good signal and I can connect to it from other devices.
Yep. I had glitchy things like that with my TEG's was using Wifi instead the Ethernet connector.
Mine worked fine for 6+ months or so. I am not sure if it was TEG firmware update, new guy next door with tons of gear, Comcast work, or sunspots, but it started timing out a lot.
Personally, given that the overwhelming experience here seems to be that wifi extenders and TEGs aren't reliable, I would consider yourself lucky that it worked for as long as it did. As far as I can tell from reports here, directly cabling the TEG on Ethernet seems to work, cabling to a WiFi extender Ethernet port, like @miimura did, seems to work, and direct wifi or putting an access point in range seems to work.
Wifi even without an extender became unreliable for me. Ethernet is solid.
