I’m new to Mikrotik so hi everyone! I’m working on a lighting installation where I’m using 39 ESP32 ton control 39 light by WIFI. The protocol I use is called Art-Net, it is a well known protocol in the entertainment industry (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art-Net). It uses UDP packet on the port 6454 and I send the data to the ESP32 in broadcast mode.
For my initial setup, I used an old Ubiquiti PowerAPN and all went very well. With this router, all my lights are really responsive, there is no glitch and no delay. After this initial setup, I wanted to have a backup router. The PowerAPN being discontinued, I went for a RB2011ViAS-2HnD-IN. The only changes I made from the factory settings is the DHCP addresses to 192.168.1.X instead of 192.168.88.X. All the ESP32 connect nicely to the router, but the lights are very glitchy, there is a lot of delay and it is very unstable and intermittent. I tried to add some Firewall entry for the 6454 UDP port without success. I also tried in unicast mode, sending data to each IP address individually without success.
My knowledge in these complex router being limited, I’m asking here if someone can help me with my problem so my setup with the Mikrotik router works as well as my setup with the old Ubiquiti.
Here are two videos that shows very well the difference between the two :
I’d say your issues are layer2, no need to add anything to the firewall - just leave it completely blank.
First thing to check is TX power - by default routerOS devices come with really high tx power which can easily overload your connected clients.
Have a look in registration table - any connection you see that has higher levels than -60 are suspect to be completely jammed on their w/l interfaces.
Set tx-power to regulatory-domain and set your country accordingly. And move your AP further away from the fixtures (at least 5m should be good)
If your fixtures support it, remove the lower basic and common rates.
If your fixtures support it, try to disable 802.11b completely and use 802.11g/n only.
Good luck,
-Chris (also in the entertainment industry and doing a lot of networking for ArtNet, sACN, MA2-Net and Dante as well)
Thanks for the reply. I set the TX settings to regulatory-domain and tried different settings of antenna gain as I red on the frorum it would decrease the tx power but without success. My tx readings in the registration table stays about always the same, between -49 and -65.
I tried to reduce it manually and the tx readings in the registration table were between -27 and -45 and it was worst, more glitchy and unreliable. Isn’t this number supposed to increase with less signal and not reduce? It is negative db, no?
I tried to place my router the farthest away and no amelioration ether.
I set up the router for N/G only and remove the lower rates and it did not change anything, same glitchs.
For broadcast traffic, look into the multicast buffering / helper and group key update interval. That said, Mikrotik generally has worse WiFi than Ubiquiti due to their outdated kernel / drivers. A modern off-the-shelf router might perform better.
I tried different multicast / buffering and group key interval with no success. Witch router would you suggest? I also did some tests with a Synology RT2600ac and it does the same glitch / delay, problems. I’m in touch with their support.
Little update : I tried with an old D-Link DWR-921 and it works very well. The only problem I have with it is it stop taking connection at 32 fixtures.
I think I’ll just stop wasting my time on the Mikrotik. It makes my sad because it looked like a really nice router with a lot of flexibility.
Now that’s a bummer.
It’s been a while since I last did ArtNet over MTik wireless.
You might try to disable multicast helper and set the lowest basic and common-rates to 24M. Don’t forget to adjust ht- and vht- mcs indexes as well.
The previously mentioned rates count for .11b and .11g - HT MCS count for .11n, VHT MCS for .11ac (not applicable on your device)
I’d suggest to disable MCS 0-2 and 8 - so the lowest rate a .11n device can connect with will be 26MBit with one (HT MCS3) or two (HT MCS9) spatial streams.
Find a very comprehensive overview of MCS index/data rates here: http://mcsindex.com/
-Chris
