Question about ethernet over power lines

[Marco2G]

Hi everyone

 

I live in a six apartment building and I've connected my workshop in the basement to my network on the third floor via a powerline bridge.

 

Now I'd like to be able to open and close my garage door via app. When I bought the TP-Link powerline adaptor set back when, I tested whether it'd reach my garage and I remember it managing albeit at a pretty bad bandwidth. But for this? Who cares!

 

Anyway, I replaced my garage door motor and today I wanted to IoT the sucker. Unfortunately, I get no connection anymore.

 

Now tl;dr:

 

Since my workshop is way closer, I was wondering whether the powerline adaptor there would act as an intermediary to extend my range. Problem is I cannot just buy a third adaptor... they're only available in a set of two and I'd hate to spend 150 bucks and then it doesn't work anyways...

[BlueChinchillaEatingDorito]

9 minutes ago, Marco2G said:

-snip-

You could try. Powerline uses the building circuitry so its hard to say for sure whether or not it'll work. 

[Marco2G]

43 minutes ago, BlueChinchillaEatingDorito said:

You could try. Powerline uses the building circuitry so its hard to say for sure whether or not it'll work. 

Which is exactly why I'm asking if anyone has experience in this matter.

 

 

[Donut417]

4 hours ago, Marco2G said:

Which is exactly why I'm asking if anyone has experience in this matter.

 

 

Power line is all about distance between point A and B. Power line adapters were originally created to work on a single circuit. The newer ones can cross the breakers but there is a cost. The more breakers and the greater the range you WILL have interference. Not sure where you live but here in the US the power company bring 220 in to the house via 2 110volt cables. Each 110volt cable connects to one side of the breaker panel. This is an issue if both locations are on different main wires. Because then the signal has to go out to the meter and this can be hell for it. 

 

So the only thing you can do is try. If it dont work, then you know. 

[Marco2G]

Here in Switzerland we have three phases. I will try whether the garage might be on a different one than the apartment and the workshop.

[Marco2G]

I just tested from the workshop to the garage and that worked fine. So I will buy another set of adapters and hope they actually do work like the graphic on TP-Links website implies

[beyonddc]

On 6/12/2018 at 3:15 PM, Marco2G said:

Now I'd like to be able to open and close my garage door via app. When I bought the TP-Link powerline adaptor set back when, I tested whether it'd reach my garage and I remember it managing albeit at a pretty bad bandwidth. But for this? Who cares!

 

Exactly like what you said.  For your use case, who cares about performance.

 

I used ZyXEL PLA5206KIT Ethernet over Powerline for good couple months.  The performance is not deterministic, sometime it could be okay and sometime it's unbearably slow.  And what adds to this un-deterministic is that sometime the powerline adapter would just stop working and I have to power cycle it (unplug and replug) the adapter.

 

I guess a fair warning that don't be surprise if one evening you cannot get into your garage because the adapter stopped working.