just bought barely used 2018 roo 19, wifi ranger?

[NJKris]

but maybe will work well at a Walmart parking lot?? Plan to utilize their hospitality on road trips.

[bikendan]

Originally Posted by DawsonMobley

Btw, Where is the inverter hidden?lol....I haven't come across it yet in my roo 19.

Roo/Shamrock trailers don't have inverters from the factory.
They have CONverters, like every RV does.

[rlh1957]

Search for wifi ranger3

[DawsonMobley]

Got up and looked at the wifiranger unit today and found out why it's not working. apparently the antenna got broken off, fell inside, which left a direct opening to the inside of the unit so it's had water in it for quite some time as you can see in the picture. I don't think there's any saving that PCB.

on a positive note I did verify that the unmarked switch on the panel does indeed control Power up to that unit.

I wonder if wifiranger will sell me a new PCB and antennas for the sky 3 system at a reasonable price?

[rlh1957]

I believe you can buy the replacement board and antenna on top. As you see it is sealed on the bottom and only the power wires come up to connect to the board.
I'd take new unit or parts they sell and just mate everything to the sealed bottom.

Forgot to mention in everything... when an operational wifi Ranger is powered on it has a blue or green LED on top that you can see at night.
Can't remember the color... my tv antenna also has a power light... one is blue and one is green.

[DawsonMobley]

Originally Posted by rlh1957

I believe you can buy the replacement board and antenna on top. As you see it is sealed on the bottom and only the power wires come up to connect to the board.
I'd take new unit or parts they sell and just mate everything to the sealed bottom.

Forgot to mention in everything... when an operational wifi Ranger is powered on it has a blue or green LED on top that you can see at night.
Can't remember the color... my tv antenna also has a power light... one is blue and one is green.

Thanks,
Yeah, I emailed wifi ranger about where to get a replacement board and antenna but I'm afraid the price will be more than I want to spend...I'm sure there are cheaper diy solutions for what I would use it for. I just figured it's there, may as well see if I can get some use out of it.

[rockfordroo]

Originally Posted by DawsonMobley

Again, that kind of thing is why I was confused, every video I could find about it showed a separate router.

Btw, Where is the inverter hidden?lol....I haven't come across it yet in my roo 19.

Originally Posted by bikendan

Roo/Shamrock trailers don't have inverters from the factory.
They have CONverters, like every RV does.

Your CONverter is located in your fuse and breaker panel.

[rvee-nut]

To clear up the confusion: WifiRanger sells commercial versions and OEM versions. If you go to their web site and click on OEM at the top, then scroll to the bottom of that page, you will see a link to a third party that supplies the OEM equipment. They have 5 OEM wifiranger products, which includes the Sky4DC, the dual-antenna unit installed on the newer Rockwoods. The other 4 products have an inside router module, including one called the SkyPro. It looks like they still produce a Sky3 product pack, which includes a separate inside router. I would guess the roof mounted part of this product is the same as our older Sky3's.

Ken

[DawsonMobley]

Thanks for all the info in this thread folks, I emailed WiFi ranger support and they said they no longer make the sky3 but the sky4 uses the same lower case, it just has a different lid that has holes for two antennas instead of the 1 on the sky 3 lid. They couldn't warranty it since I have no idea how it got broken but did offer to send me the sky4 pcb, antennas, and lid for $95 shipped so I took them up on that offer since it's an upgrade as well as quite a bit cheaper than I was expecting a replacement board to cost. Even if I don't use it very often at that price I can afford to have it there and working if I ever do.

[RusLwt001]

Have you tried a wifi search on your phone? Check to see if the ranger is being identified. That might answer a q
Question or two.

[DawsonMobley]

Originally Posted by RusLwt001

Have you tried a wifi search on your phone? Check to see if the ranger is being identified. That might answer a q
Question or two.

Yeah I tried all that, it's definitely dead... The board is delaminating and components are completely rusted off of it in the darker area in the picture I posted

[Cantdrive55]

Just FYI, I have tried using a Chromecast without having internet, just the Ranger nd it doesn't really work well. It doesn't make a local network very well and the bandwidth lags horribly. Your luck may be different and if you do ever get it going, please let me know. I wanted to stream a movie I downloaded on my phone off Netflix to the Chromecast and it just wouldn't stream worth a crap. When I used my phone hotspot and let the ranger connect to that then everyone who I gave the password to could use my hotspot. The Chromecast worked flawlessly at that point.

[DawsonMobley]

Originally Posted by Cantdrive55

Just FYI, I have tried using a Chromecast without having internet, just the Ranger nd it doesn't really work well. It doesn't make a local network very well and the bandwidth lags horribly. Your luck may be different and if you do ever get it going, please let me know. I wanted to stream a movie I downloaded on my phone off Netflix to the Chromecast and it just wouldn't stream worth a crap. When I used my phone hotspot and let the ranger connect to that then everyone who I gave the password to could use my hotspot. The Chromecast worked flawlessly at that point.

Thanks for the info, I got the new guts for it today and installed it and just got in from figuring it all out.

The chromecast does require an internet connection to work properly since it is not streaming video/music from the phone (although I think in mirroring mode it actually does to some degree), the chromecast creates it's own connection to the media you are casting to it so that the phone becomes a remote for the chromecast, not a source.

Anyway, Couple things I found out while playing with it. The wifi ranger can connect to my phones hotspot but the phone that is being used for the hotspot cannot also be connected to the wifi ranger network, which means that, since the phone has to be on the same wifi network as the chromecast to be able to access it) you can't use the hotspot phone with the chromecast. So if I want to watch or listen to anything via the chromecast I would use my wifes phone as the hotspot or vice versa if she wants to cast anything.

This worked well for video and music when testing, and of course if you can get on the campgrounds wifi then that isn't an issue at all but campground wifi is often useless. The wifiranger sky4 they sent me does seem to have pretty good range, it was seeing a lot more wifi networks around my home than I ever see on my phones wifi scans here.

I'm pretty happy with it overall....As long as where we camp is within range of verizon lte we should be good to go with youtube, netflix, music services or whatever we want to watch or listen too.

The new pcb popped right in the old box and comes with a new lid with 2 antennas (vs the sky3's one), for 95 bucks shipped I'm happy with this setup.