camelot-forum.co.uk

Been to see a customer today with work (nothing RE related) and was oogling at his wood boiler , 1000 litre storage , 49kw of pv (small cheese maker) .Saw he had 3 x solar i-boosts -1 was dead , asked him why -he said they dont work cos they are too far for the wireless things .........and company who installed (i won't name) don't want to know..........
I thought there was a hard wire option ?? but have little knowledge of these ( Solic man here) -i did mend one once with help from a previous forum
Any i-boost experts ?
George

You need Oliver90owner George and perhaps myself. I’ve just logged on here fitting a Solic 200 with a hard wire connection to the meter tails to prevent export. Joeboy has an iboost and I’m sure he’ll be along soon.

Sorry lads I never looked into hardwiring as it was in range for the wireless sender. There are wifi repeaters out there that can boost range if hardwiring is not an option. Worth a email to Marlec maybe?

https://www.marlec.co.uk/product/solar-iboost/

I see they do a 5m wire extension for the sender. Without looking in detail, I guess it goes between the CT and the transmitter box.

edit;

If you experience “Lost Signal to Sender” owing to thick or steel walls this cable can simply be plugged between the Sender and Clamp connections. This enables you to position the Sender nearer to the Solar iBoost+ to establish or better maintain the signal.

I decided to try to get an iboost to work over an ~50-60m distance. Solar panels on meter barn and dwelling some distance away.

Not without difficulty.

I tried all sorts of line of site experiments but couldn't get them to communicate reliably (at all really over that distance). I bought a length of Comms cable and figured the 5m extension could probably be extended "a bit" more. It's just a pair of wires. Ended up going, with the Comms cable all the way overground to test if that would work. It wouldn't, I don't know enough about how the signal works to know why but am not surprised there is a limit.

Fortunately, there was a pole with a conduit to it about half way between dwelling and meter barn. At that point, say 30m each way, the iboost wireless signal was strong enough to communicate with the iboost in the loft and the sender could cope with an extension of about that length.

I did experiment with an uprated aerial on the sender which seemed to improve signal strength too. However, that sender died recently and the replacement seemed to work off the bat fine with no modifications.

It's at the limit but is reliable enough.

I would have hard wired something all the way if possible but as a bodge is ok.