Setup a new Eve Weather device yesterday. Seems to work fine when nearby. But when I put it outside I soon get the dreaded “accessory not reachable” message from the Eve app. I brought it in the house and it works again. Back outside and again unreachable.
I’m a little confused because it’s only about 15 feet and a wall away from my router. And it’s no more than 20 feet from my HomePod Mini which I think is handling the Thread connection. And it’s right next to my Netatmo weather sensor which works fine.
Any ideas? I’m kinda stumped. Thanks in advance!
Any chance your wall is thick enough or contains materials that would attenuate or entirely block the signal?
In my last job we had employees who were remote and worked from home a good chunk of the time.
Some were living in nice old stone farm houses and had wireless network issues between rooms.
Some were living in modern builds which had fire protection materials in their walls that interfered with radio wave access to external services.
1 Like
Very fair question. I could def see if this was a really old house with stone or stucco walls with rebar, chicken wire, etc. But this house was built in the 80s, just regular drywall, and the devices aren’t far at all from my Eero base station or HomePod Mini. 
Okay, so from a purely logical perspective, I guess there’s a few things you could try to figure out with a bit of testing:
- Is it definitely the HomePod Mini that is providing the thread connectivity?
- That might take a bit of detective work based on what devices you have that could otherwise be providing the connection.
- But if it isn’t the HomePod mini, then your distances are off and bringing the weather statio inside might mean it is just coming into range of another device.
- Is the wall actually causing any issue?
- What happens if you move the HomePod Mini close to that exteror wall temporarily?
- What happens if you move the weather station further away from the HomePod Mini to an equivalent distance of what it was before?
- Could there be any other devices causing interference?
- You can test this purely by moving things around the house.
- One of my kids once had a radio controlled car that constantly drove in circles if you were within about 50’ of my living room - without the transmitter being turned on. After an awful lot of head scratching and testing I tracked theinterference down to the base station for a cordless phone.
- Could there be an antenna orientation that improves things?
- I don’t have either of these devices, or in fact any thread compatible devices as far as I know. But, radio wave transmissions need to utilise a broadcast antenna. The orientation of such antenna can produce different signal strengths between devices - it’s why many routers have external antenna that you can orient to improve coverage in different directions and orientations. It’s how I manage to get good coverage everywhere in my house with a single wirless router.
- I would expect both devices in this case to probably be just fine if they are positioned in a standard orientation (e.g. a HomePod Mini sat on a table rather than mounted vertically to a wall, and at a reasonably consistent height.); I’m very much clutching at straws with this one and think it would be incredibly unlikely to be an issue.
- You have a dodgy X.
- There is always a chance that one of your devices is not performing as expected.
- By varying your devices and line of sight distances, you may be able to tell if a particular device is generally under performing and perhaps needs replacing.
Maybe some focused testing will yield something useful?
1 Like
Thanks, some very good points in there. I think the only other Thread device in my house is my NanoLeaf light kit?
But like you said I’m tinkering with locations of things. Thanks! 
Update, still investigating. Now I’m digging into the possibility of a problem with Thread and/or the HomePod Mini.
Have been working with Eve support, they had me check the Thread network via the app and it can’t find anything, which of course is odd. They also had me check for some things w the " Discovery - DNS-SD Browser" iOS app. They said I should see an item “_hap._udp” for Thread devices which I do not see. Also said I should see a “_meshcop._udp” for Thread Border Router, which I do see.
FWIW, I also have NanoLeaf lights here which I think act as a Border Router?
Eve support had me reset the HomePod Mini from scratch and re-setup, which I’ve done twice. I’ve also reset the Eve Weather twice. But still in the same spot.
So how does it work “when nearby” as per your original post?
I think it must have been back using Bluetooth at that point?
I didn’t realize it at the time, but what I think was happening was that the connection is started with Bluetooth then I would lose it once it switched to Thread. I had reset the Eve device each time so I didn’t really catch that at the time. There’s still something else going on I have to figure out.