G+_William Burlingame Posted December 29, 2016 Share Posted December 29, 2016 I just installed a TP-Link Ethernet Over Powerline with WiFi at my son's house and ran into a problem. We did the setup in his office near the modem/router and things were working great. When we moved the remote device to another part of the house, it wouldn't work. I took it back to the office to check the setup, and didn't see a problem. Then my son mentioned he had two electrical panels. That was the problem. They are evidently isolated from each other. We found another outlet near where he needed a stronger signal, but on the same electrical panel as the office and it worked well. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Dan Hockey Posted December 30, 2016 Share Posted December 30, 2016 If it is a 240 volt 60hz service entering your house you may be powering it from the other "leg" 120 volt side of your power. Years ago x10 devices suffered from the same problem. The solution was a little device called a bridge, that would be wired to both 120 volt(240 volt) lines at the main breaker box. What it would do, it would receive a signal from one 120 v side and it would re transmit the signal to the other 120 volt side. One way you can test this is to move your device from outlet to outlet around your house to see which outlets receive a signal and which one don't. Hope this helps. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_William Burlingame Posted December 30, 2016 Author Share Posted December 30, 2016 Both panels have a 240 volt 60Hz service and thus there are two legs in each panel. The devices don't have a problem when using outlets on either leg of the same panel, but they do have to use outlets being fed from the same panel. The panels are labeled very well as to what is fed from each breaker in each panel. Since the entire area near the router is fed from one panel, we just had to find a remote outlet near the area with poor WiFi that was fed from the same panel. It wasn't difficult after I found out he had two panels. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Jason Marsh Posted December 31, 2016 Share Posted December 31, 2016 It's all about the branch circuits. I put a pair of TP-Link powerline adapters on separate panels in a large home with semi-attached mother-in-law quarters; there's only one drop and meter, but the two halves of the structure are each on their own 200 Amp panel. The structure is less than ten years old. The master powerline unit was basically on the longest circuit from the main house's load center, and the slave unit was on the shortest branch I could find in the apartment's load center. It worked better than in my own home, which has only one panel. Go figure... In my own home, I found that powerline was a little better after checking and tightening the setscrews on all the breakers in the panel. The clamping force of the setscrew relaxes as the copper takes a set after a while, either through cold flow or as a result of heat cycling, eventually degrading the connection. I actually found a few circuits which were scary loose. One shouldn't be able to pull a circuit from a breaker without any force at all, right? :) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_William Burlingame Posted December 31, 2016 Author Share Posted December 31, 2016 More than four years ago, I installed a D-Link Ehternet Over Powerline without WiFi at my own home. I have a single panel and haven't had any problems. I used mine for an IP security camera, I was having a problem with a poor WiFi signal in my detached garage. I use my EOP with a short cable to the camera. Speed isn't critical for that application. I've never checked the breaker set screws. At the time, I wasn't aware that there were EOP devices with WiFi. Mine did indicate that they should be plugged into an outlet and not a power strip. I din't know if that is still a problem with newer devices or not. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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