Wi-fi in Detached Garage

[stalwart1]

Hi. I need Wi-fi in my detached garage for an indoor Trainer running Zwift which is a virtual cycling platform. It's really important for my fitness and I use it a lot.

I've had standard copper Sky broadband for the last couple of yrs and with a Booster near the back door the Wi-fi in the garage was adequate.  The garage is only probably 10ft away from the main house.

I've now upgraded to Full Fibre which is great but I didn't really need faster speed tbh. I only took it as it was no more expensive and they said that Copper cabling would stop being supported soon anyway so I had better upgrade.  However, although it is faster the Wi-fi signal seems weaker and doesn't stretch to the garage. I've put a Max Pod at the socket in the house nearest to the garage but it still isn't great. Very frustrating as I thought I was getting 'better' Broadband and wish I

had never upgraded tbh.  They also had to dig up half of the road which I wasn't expecting but it's done now.

I've tried Powerlines from Curry's which don't seem to work so am not sure what to do. I am paying for Wi-fi Max but I presume if I ask for another Pod or Engineer visit they will just say they don't support Wi-fi coverage in any detached outbuildings?

Any sensible ideas for what I should do to help

wih this situation? 🤔

[JimM1]

@stalwart1 Does your previous booster not connect to the Sky Max hub?

[stalwart1]

To be honest I hadn't thought to try. Do the older upright Boosters work with the Max Hub? 🤔

[JimM1]

@stalwart1 Not going to swear 100% but yes, the sky Max do not use as will not entertain a hub that has to be done with a mobile phone app. You can let us know for sure just be carefull with the WPS button on the Max, to long and you are reseting the sucker, so couple second press then off see if the light flashes for WPS mode...

[stalwart1]

Just had a quick try and it looks like the older upright Booster doesn't connect to the Max Hub.

[JimM1]

@stalwart1 Just did a booster connect this morning to a new SR203 from the Old sky Q hub, you do have to put both right next to each other for them to connect, i had them about 1' foot apart! Takes about 5 minutes for it all to work you just have to be patient!

[JZAB3R]

The booster 4 and booster 2 (Q booster) will pair to a max hub and show 3 green lights, but will only work for Q connectivity. Eg. If a Q set top box is too far away from the router, then a booster can be connected to the hub 6 over 2.4 ghz to act as the gateway, and Q meshed to that over 5ghz

No other devices will connect to these boosters when a hub 6 is in situ, and the only Sky extenders which will work to boost WiFi coverage  are the Max pods.

Sky will not provide a second pod for WiFi coverage in an external building, and powerline will not work if the garage has its own ring on a separate consumer unit. 
Unfortunately there's no way to revert, which means other means would need to be explored to achieve WiFi in the garage, ideally using Ethernet.

[JimM1]

@stalwart1 If you have also kept the old SR203 hub you can go back to the old unit and replace the sky Max hub and the pod, just use as previous. The old SE210 was sometimes hard to get them to pair and required a connect with an Ethernet cable but that was such a long time ago at least 5 years back now, and never had any issues with wps to both unit's, but once 3 green are up on the booster it does require checking that data and connection on the device are both working.!

And worth taking a quick look on your sky Max hub with your mobile app to see what the max Hub has for it's wpa mode, if it's on WPA3 then WPA2-PSK will work way better for wireless connection.