Probably solved: Bad reception / low range Neo Coolcam powerplugs

[TonkaNL]

Hi all!

My NCC powerplugs have a crap range and go dead all the time.

So I soldered a solid copper small gauge wire to the internal antenna and drilled a small hole in the side to get the wire out. See attached pic. Seems to fix the connection/range issues..

I’ll keep you posted abt the result.

[lumjajo]

This is something you really should not do, because of electrical safety. It loses almost every certification this thing probably never had
Now honestly I would not do this...

[TonkaNL]

What consequences would that have? My insurance would still be applicable if the house would burn down, which is not going to happen because of this..

I mean, what safety is impaired by soldering something to the existing antenna wire?

I’m not a US resident, so perhaps other rules and regs apply regarding liability..?

[fargle]

Just out of curiosity you should take a voltage reading from the bare tip of your home-made "antenna" to the ground pin of that socket. Don't know about this model, but the internals of these devices are often not isolated from the mains. Not good practice, at least tape up that exposed conductor....its human safety that's the issue here, not so much electrical safety.

[zenit]

Hi,

I just stumbled upon this topic. Carefull with the possible voltage on the antenna. Look at this topic from another forum :
https://www.letscontrolit.com/forum/vie ... lly#p40368

There are also a lot of examples of modules which have to be flashed (firmware), Always disconnect mains / 230V power. This is non applicable to your NEO coolcam plug however.

Most of these appliances fed by 230v (from a wallsocket) aren't galvannicaly seperated (cheap / small electronics in a tiny housing).
So a DANGEROUS voltage could occur between ground and your antenna (kids, animals, wife.....will be electrocuted when touched)!

[rrozema]

I fully agree with the safety concerns uttered above, but there's another reason why you should not do this and that is because the length of the antenna must be very precisely matched with the frequency used for the communication with this device, 848.42 MHz in Europe.

Reception problems are more easily solved by placing another -mains powered- zwave device in between of the controller and this device. Such a device will relay all data back and forth between the other devices, as the z-wave network is a mesh network.

[akamming]

I stopped buying NEO coolcam plugs anyway. I have very good experiences with the old ones (id 0x1087, type 0x0003). Although they have bad mesh functionality (i compensated buy using a few fibaro and qubino for having a good mesh network), they work quite OK.

But the new ones ( i ordered 8 of them in a deal on Ali express), which look the same, but underneath they are a different hardware (id 0x1027, type 0x0200) and i have all kind of weird problems since i added them to the network.
- The range is indeed an issue
- Sometimes they just stop working (Sometimes removing and readding them to power works, sometimes i have to readd them to the z-wave configuration in domoticz)
- 3 out of 8 failed with the smell of burning plastic and i could not revive
- ghost devices added to my zwave setup in domoticz. They just have a high node number, fortunately i can remove them again without consequeneces)
- but worse: the make a mess of the mesh, my zwave network became unreliable:
- other devices switching on and off when i try to witch on a certain device (does not have to be the neo coolcam)
- devices sometimes switching on or off in my network without a reason
- weird sensor readings in all kinds of devices

when i removed the new neo coolcams from the z-wave network and did a network heal, all these problems were gone, now stable again for about a month. My advice is: Stay away from the neo coolcam powerplugs!

[lost]

My advice is: Stay away from the neo coolcam powerplugs!

Previous devices also had issues. Still have one that is almost never switched (and only feeding the 7W standby power consumption of my garage door motor) that (almost) works, but with increasing range issues (showing up on a switch command, device is then unresponsive/timeout until unplug/replug).

Problem with these ones was z-wave chip power circuitry was over simplified,quickly or at best slowly (depending on device&load) burning the z-wave chip leading to quick or progressive failures.

I also suspect the CE for these ones is the "China Export" hack.

For security, just avoid 220V powered Neo devices at all. I have some battery devices that also have issues:
-Their PIR, copy of the Fibaro "eye", for older version not using a magnet starts periodically switching without any movement when battery falls under 20/30% depending on devices, so in alarm setup take care to change batteries at 40% reported level to avoid false alarm trigger. Newer version with a magnet use same manufecturer/device ID for 2 different devices: One with a temp sensor, another without. This is an issue as z-wave configurations are not compatible and device config XML file selection is done by OZW using these IDs. A dirty hack was needed to make both versions work (parameters that apply for one version and not the other + text to explain why).
-Flooding sensor, for now, seems to be a no brainer & include the remote sense unit +wall mount that is missing to many competitors (or sold as an option), allowing wall mount (away from possible flood!) with remote sensor on the floor (not the whole device).
-Siren also looks OK, only needing a 5V micro-USB power (on top of internal battery backup: IMO, external power is mandatory for such device that cannot sleep because must be able to receive a switch command anytime!) but most people have some now (from an old device/phone. Only issue, as with other brands, is not exposing 2 switches: One for alarm sound, one for chime. Thus using same device for both is impossible.

So, if you stay far from 220V powered ones, some devices from Neo are OK (at least until you experience poor battery report and device misbehaving instead of just switching off!), but test level is for sure not on par with competitors for many of them.