Help with Wi-Fi Connectivity

You can place the device anywhere that has Wi-Fi coverage. However, you should avoid areas where the Wi-Fi is very weak, as this can shorten your battery life due to the device making repeated connection retries to GeoDrops Cloud, over a spotty Internet connection.

Our official spec is up to 150 ft (45 m) long-range Wi-Fi.  However, the actual range depends on many factors, such as how powerful the antennas of your wireless router are, how many other interfering Wi-Fi networks (2.4GHz) there are, and how many objects are blocking the wireless signal between the GeoDrops Droplet device and your Wi-Fi router.

During our early beta stage testing in a rural community farm, we were able to successfully keep the device connected to a Cisco (commercial-grade) Wi-Fi access point that was 500 ft (200 m) away!

In short, as long as you are able to connect to Wi-Fi from your smartphone (even if there's just 1 bar), the GeoDrops Droplet device will be able to connect, thanks to the built-in, high-gain antennas.  

Yes.  The GeoDrops Droplet works with all 2.4GHz Wi-Fi Extenders.  However, we strongly recommend using a different SSID for your Wi-Fi Extender than your original Wi-Fi router (base station).

We recommend a different SSID because of our low-power design, where we want the device to wake up and go back to sleep within a split second.

To elaborate, a different SSID is recommended because GeoDrops is an ultra-low-power device that is predominantly in deep-sleep mode most of the time.  The device software (RTOS Runtime Lib) we have written is designed to be extremely fast and power-efficient, so we do not spend time voting and selecting the stronger Wi-Fi signal among similarly named SSIDs (doing so would cause too much battery drain).  Thus, as soon as the device is able to communicate with a Wi-Fi network (any network that matches the SSID, regardless of the signal strength), it will use it to synchronize device data, and immediately go back to sleep.

If you need to change the Wi-Fi network name (SSID) or password, perform the following:

In the GeoDrops App, tap on Set Up WIFI under Device Status and follow the instructions.

In the GeoDrops App, tap on the device to open its device details → Tap Device Status → See Wi-Fi strength.

You can also scroll down to NETWORK → Tap on More to see the Wi-Fi signal strength (dBm) history.

In short, you do not need to do anything.  The GeoDrops Droplet device remembers your Wi-Fi connection settings and will simply auto-reconnect.

This means:

• If your Wi-Fi router was turned off for an extended period, simply leave your GeoDrops Droplet powered on.  It will automatically detect the network and reconnect as soon as your Wi-Fi is back online.

• If you turned off the GeoDrops Droplet by removing or changing its batteries, simply power it back on.  It remembers your previous Wi-Fi settings and will automatically reconnect to the same network.

First, please make sure the Wi-Fi is 2.4GHz, and that you have entered the Wi-Fi name (SSID) correctly, and that you watch out for accidental trailing spaces.  Many modern Wi-Fi networks use 5GHz and 6GHz for faster connection speeds.  GeoDrops only uses 2.4GHz, which trades off faster speed for longer range.

Next, please make sure the password is correct.  You can unhide it by tapping the eye (👁️‍🗨️) icon to check for typos or extra spaces.

Finally, please do not insert the batteries until the app explicitly tells you to.

IMPORTANT:  During the device pairing from start to end, keep your phone screen awake the entire time.  Some phones automatically disable Bluetooth and Wi-Fi scanning when the screen goes to sleep, requiring you to start the entire process all over again.