Constant upload causing intermittent wifi interruptions

Sensors Troubleshooting
1

Hey guys,

First, I’ll just say that I’m not 100% certain but here goes

It seems like my purpleair sensor is causing a constant 300 kbps upload burden on my wireless network and, more critically, might be overwhelming the wireless router.

We’ve been having intermittent and unexpected network trouble. During today’s diagnostic effort, I removed clients from the wifi network 1 at a time without improvement. During that time I could not even run some speed tests. Others would say 60 kbps. After I removed the purple air sensor (uplugged it), I had, within a few minutes, 30 Mbps (normal). I figured it couldn’t be the purpleair but left it off. Later, having had no further network trouble, I plugged the purpleair back in and within 15 minutes was having network issues again (so bad I would not have been able to type this forum post). I managed to observe a constant 300 kbps upload burden during this time. I’ve unplugged the purpleair sensor and am again back to normal internet! Upload burden dropped to 40 kbps.

Has anyone had this experience? Any ideas for me? Is this a device failure, a security problem, or (still possible but disinclined to think so) a big coincidence? FYI, I didn’t have this problem when I first attached the purpleair but it was developed over the last few weeks.

Thanks for any ideas, shared experience, etc.

2

There is no reason for the PurpleAIr sensor to ever send that much data. Are you sure it was the PA and not something else that had usurped its IP? If you can grab a traffic trace the next time it happens it might help to figure out what it (or something else) was trying to do at that moment.

Its certainly possible for there to be a download if it was acquiring a firmware update, but that would be short.