A weak signal and unstable Wi-Fi connection with your Router or Access Point (AP), will cause the Joan device to enter a cycle of disconnects and reconnects to the network, affecting Joan’s battery life, responsiveness, system stability and more.
Here are a few factors that might cause your Joan devices to be unable to connect to a network or to have an unstable connection:
- Joan network requirements
- Signal strength
- AP roaming / separate SSIDs
- Firewall and Access Point rulesets
Joan network requirements
Ensure that your current network meets the requirements of the Joan 6 and Joan 13 devices.
- Wi-Fi standard: IEEE 802.11 b/g/n
- Wi-Fi frequency: 2.4 GHz
- Supported channels: 1 - 11
- Supported encryption: WPA2-PSK (AES) and WPA2-EAP
- 20MHz channel width
- The minimum bitrate parameter of the network is set to 6 Mbps or lower (optional requirement - only if the network’s APs allow tweaking this setting)
Joan 6 Pro:
- Wi-Fi standard: IEEE 802.11 b/g/n
- Wi-Fi frequency: 2.4 GHz / 5 GHz
- Supported channels: 1 - 11
- Supported encryption: WPA3-PSK, WPA2-PSK (AES) and WPA2-EAP
- The minimum bitrate parameter of the network is set to 6 Mbps or lower (optional requirement - only if the network’s APs allow tweaking this setting)
For a more detailed breakdown of the requirements, please click here.
Signal strength
Joan devices operate with low-power Wi-Fi modules which provide an extremely long battery life. However, such modules have higher signal sensitivity.
A bad Wi-Fi signal will cause delays in Joan's response time and increase the battery consumption of the Joan devices. So, make sure that the location of your Joan device has strong signal coverage.
The signal strength of a Joan device can be tracked in the device management section of MyJoan.
There are also third-party apps and websites which can provide you with a more detailed breakdown of the available Wi-Fi networks and their signal strength. Allowing you to find the perfect position for your Joan device.
However, please keep in mind that smartphones and computers/laptops operate with more powerful Wi-Fi modules and thus may show stronger signals than the ones Joan devices can sense.
AP roaming / separate SSID
If your network has multiple Access Points (APs), device roaming across multiple APs might occur, resulting in high amounts of disconnects and reconnects shortening the battery life of the Joan devices.
The first option to resolve this issue is to disable the automatic roaming setting on your Access Points.
However, a more fail-safe option would be to create a separate SSID only for Joan devices in your network. This will not only eliminate any possible roaming between APs, but it will also ensure that the network will not become overcrowded which might negatively influence the performance of your Joan devices.
Firewall and Access Point (AP) rulesets
To achieve their amazing battery efficiency, Joan devices are almost always in a very low power mode. Due to that, by default, they send status updates or so-called heartbeats to the server only every 3 or 5 minutes. Since they cause very little network traffic and don't communicate that often with the Access Points, some networks might disconnect them automatically.
This is usually the case if you have some external firewall rules or some specific AP settings set.
To mitigate the issue, we recommend verifying if you have any rules set, that could cause inactive devices to disconnect. Those rules/settings might be for the external firewall or AP, so please check both.
If you encounter any issues, please contact support@getjoan.com.