Can't get the new LX7004 Mitras to connect wirelessly

[shoggoth43]

I've spent several hours now trying to get the new lights to connect wirelessly. I grabbed the latest GCC, which for some reason decides it's in German, and nothing I do will change that. So I have two lights that refuse to cooperate and other than having them hanging that's about the only progress I have to show for it. I tried following their video but those steps do not result in any improvement. I'm using a 2.4 Ghz network so I have the lights set for b/g network, and b/g/n doesn't seem to make any difference anyway. If I set the lights to an access point I can't even ping them. Kind of at a loss here. They look nice, but not hundreds of dollars of hanging modern art nice. I can find other things to spend that money on.

Does anyone have some concrete steps for me to try? wifi module is showing 7078 firmware. Firmware is 1.11.

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S

 

[Vinny@GHLUSA]

Do this for each light:
1. Power ON light
2. Connect to GHLDEV network
3. Open GHL Connect app
4. Add a new device, select the LX7, give this connection a name (LX7 hotspot), leave HOST as-is
5. Connect to LX7
6. Set to Master or slave, set address to consecutive numbers (Master- Address #1, Slave 1 - Address #2, etc.)

 

[shoggoth43]

I had to specifically put in a wireless IP address. Once I did that it was able to connect to the wireless system for the master light. After the second was in slave mode it seemed to take the hint from the master light and was able to connect to the wireless network without needing the IP address being set. Very odd. So they do work now, but way more of a fight than they should have been.

 

[jake37]

I had to specifically put in a wireless IP address. Once I did that it was able to connect to the wireless system for the master light. After the second was in slave mode it seemed to take the hint from the master light and was able to connect to the wireless network without needing the IP address being set. Very odd. So they do work now, but way more of a fight than they should have been.

yea. I have to say every daylight time i have to fight tooth and nail with these lights. It has been suggested i can enable the client mode and they will keep the clock up to date but as far as i can tell on my units the client mode doesn't work - at least they never show up on the router. Some of the units keep hotspot running 24/7 others have to be power cycled. can't set their name as the ap times out or crashes trying to change the ssid. The actual lights are nice but the head-ache in actually using these is beyond belief compared to competitors. I've used first hand for at least 4 years wrgb chiros 2 (kind of finicky sometimes); fluval plant 3.0 (never an issue); onf flat (ap is a bit weak compared to others but still never an issue); and for the past year ai blade freshwater (it evens knows about day light time; real pleasure to use);

Part of the issue seems to be the design of the ghl lx lights; they lack blue tooth connection; so connecting via wifi is more painful esp if you have a large cluster and can't name the individual lights ssid. firmware update currently doesn't seem possible via phone and worse of all the android ap crashes on the lx7004 so you can't even adjust the time on them.

The solution might be to update the firmware but requiring a laptop (running windows) to update the firmware seems harsh. Furthermore having to plug the usb into each individual unit in a large cluster is a pain. With my other devices i connect - it tells me i have new firmware and ask if i want to update them. I can update all my non-ghl lights in less than an hour (i have 12 different lights scattered).

I guess what i'm trying to say is the actual lights are decent but the time waste in using them is a pain. I spent more than an hour just updating the time on one cluster (lx7006 which does not have the ap crashing bug) because i have to crawl underneath the aquarium to reach the plug to restart the hotspot; then after each restart i have to see if any of the lights failed to start (a lot of time at least one in the cluster will flash and not reboot); so after 6 or 7 times of crawling under the aquarium; power cycling - waiting at least 60 seconds between power cycle i finally got all of them to restart so i can connect to them to reset the time. I still can't update the time on the lx7004 cluster because of the crashing ap; mean while i updated the time on all my other lights (non ai blade which auto adjusted for daylight saving time) in under 5 minutes. Thats 2 wrgb2; and 6 plant 3.0. And guess what my $15 smart plugs (kasa; great device); don't even need to be tweaked they connect to the local network; run ntp and keep the time correct start and the ap seems to always work; yet these $600 lights .... what more can i say.