Duet with no WLAN - wired operation possible?

[Zn0rt]

Hello knowledgeable forum members,

My Duet and I have been happy for these past couple years. Until now the Duet was operating in a 802.11G WLAN environment. Because the Duet will be moved far beyond the range of the access point (no, repeaters and antennas will not help) using Wifi to connect to the PC that has Squeezebox Server running will no longer be viable.

The Duet receiver has an ethernet port on back. Great! Cat5e cable can go far and be brought through floors and walls. This means the Duet can be used without a WLAN, right?

My observation: Having connected my reciever to my 100BASE-TX-based LAN and having turned off my 802.11G-based WLAN, I found that I was unable to get the controller to talk to the receiver. The controller gives me the option to "choose player", with the choices being itself (the controller) or the receiver. However selecting the receiver didn't work (no error message was displayed) and the controller returns to the main menu and waits for me to "choose player" again.

The funny question: is it sad but true that although the receiver has a wired ethernet port and thus does not required a WLAN to operate, it can't be controlled via the controller unless there is indeed a WLAN running?

It would be a very very good thing if the controller could talk to the receiver directly via an ad-hoc connection instead of requiring a separate access point running to which the controller and receiver are joined, for precisely the situation I find myself in: I'm too far away from an access point, but I'm clearly close enough to the Duet to be able to hear the speakers attached to it.

In fact, I assumed that this last point was a feature of the Duet product. If someone shows me how this can indeed be made to work, I'd be very appreciative.

Thanks,

X

[garym]

You can do exactly what you are wanting to do. There is a "bridge" mode that allows the controller to connect wirelessly to the receiver itself rather than through the WLAN. In effect, the receiver creates its own "ad hoc" wireless network for talking to the controller. I haven't set mine up this way, but I believe you have to go through the setup procedures to do this. So you should likely do a factory reset on the receiver, then restart it with it connected to ethernet. Then when going through the setup, select the bridged mode for connecting. see these threads to get started.

http://forums.slimdevices.com/showth...ht=hybrid+mode
http://forums.slimdevices.com/showth...ht=hybrid+mode

[flattermann]

I do not have a Controller, so I do not know if AdHoc WLAN should work.

Well, the Receiver has an AdHoc setting, but I've not tried it...


But can't you just add a small (additional) WLAN AccessPoint near the Receiver?

You connect the AP via LAN to your SBS network and the Receiver and the Controller can connect via WLAN to the AP.

Of course, you can also connect the Receiver to the LAN and use the WLAN only for the Controller.


Edit: garym is right, I forgot the bridging mode! That should be exactly what you were searching for...

[Zn0rt]

Hi garym,

that was the trick: a factory reset of the controller war required, then the magical "connect to receiver" option showed up (along with the option to connect to a wireless network).

Yep, now it works! Interestingly, the range of the ad-hoc connection between the controller and the receiver is not bad at all. I am not sure how much sensitivity the two antennas have nor how much power the radios are able to send with, but it seems to do quite well.

Thanks for the help!

-Z

You can do exactly what you are wanting to do. There is a "bridge" mode that allows the controller to connect wirelessly to the receiver itself rather than through the WLAN. In effect, the receiver creates its own "ad hoc" wireless network for talking to the controller. I haven't set mine up this way, but I believe you have to go through the setup procedures to do this. So you should likely do a factory reset on the receiver, then restart it with it connected to ethernet. Then when going through the setup, select the bridged mode for connecting. see these threads to get started.

[garym]

Good to hear this worked for you!