Mexico City Smart Home: Wi-Fi and Cement Don’t Mix (Premium)

Last month, I discussed my plans to bring an Eero 6E Pro mesh Wi-Fi router, two Echo Dot speakers, and a Blink Outdoor 4 camera to Mexico City. We’re here now, and I’ve wasted more time than I should have trying to set it all up. My success rate thus far is modest.

The goal here is to get the Blink camera mounted on our balcony so we can enjoy the view when we’re away. Getting there requires a few extra pieces, however.

The Wi-Fi on the router our Internet provider here gave us doesn’t reach out to that corner of the balcony, so we needed to extend that somehow, either with a literal Wi-Fi extender, with a better, possibly mesh-based system, or at least with a better, more modern Wi-Fi router.

The Blink camera utilizes a sync module that requires power, connects to the same Wi-Fi network as the camera, and can optionally connect to USB-based storage to save recordings without requiring a subscription. (The subscription is cheap, so I went that route instead.)

What I ultimately settled on was a single-node Eero 6E Pro mesh Wi-Fi router and two Amazon Echo Dot speakers (because they can function as inexpensive Eero Wi-Fi extenders using something called eero Built-in). I didn’t configure the Eero in the U.S. before flying here, but I did experiment with the Echo Dots on my home (three-node) eero network. But I couldn’t get them to work as extenders there because the coverage is too good. (This is an automatic thing, you can’t just force it on.)

No problem, I figured. The apartment here in Mexico City is small, about 750 square feet, but it has thick concrete walls that kill the Wi-Fi signal quickly. So I figured I could just place the Dots in the far corners of each bedroom here, near the outside walls where our balcony is, and the eero Built-in functionality would do its thing.

Technology has a way of getting between me and my plans, of course.

I flew to Mexico City with a single bag. It contained only a handful of clothing items because all we need is already here in the apartment: Three cheap Amazon polo shirts to replace the older shirts I’d left here and the t-shirt, shorts, and socks I had worn the previous day, plus a small toiletry bag. But my bag was full: It contained the Eero, the speakers, the camera, a camera mount and some other doodads, all their associated power adapters and cables, a couple of power cables and extenders, and a few other tech items. It sailed through security somehow: I was positive I’d be forced to pull it all out for TSA, but they barely looked at it.

We arrived in Mexico City around noon yesterday (Tuesday), took a 30-minute Uber ride to the apartment, unpacked, got some fans running–it’s been hotter than usual here in Mexico City for a few months now, oddly–and headed out for lunch. After that, I did some light work and napped, more tired than I felt I should have been. But I had slept poorly the night before, and travel and time zone changes are tough.

This morning, finally, I started setting up the equipment. I couldn’t wait.

The Eero set up was simple enough: I just plugged it into power and connected it via the supplied Ethernet cable to the Internet provider’s ONT (Optical Network Terminal, the Internet router basically). After it powered up, I ran through the mobile app-based setup, created a new network, and connected a few devices without issue.

I will disable the Wi-Fi network on the ONT at some point–I need to figure out the login information for that, it’s around here somewhere–but they can coexist for now. All the PCs and devices we have here connected to it without issue–Windows celebrated the improved quality of the Wi-Fi network with a little banner pop-up on each PC–and so I moved on to the next steps.

Which I will simplify here because, seriously, whatever. Life is too short for the details.

There are four pieces here, the Blink camera, its sync module, and the two Echo Dot speakers. Each requires power, limiting where they can be placed. And each needed to be reconfigured for the new network. And that required some combination of the Amazon Alexa, eero, and Blink apps on my phone.

It all went well enough. I moved the speakers to the new network, configured a “Roma Norte” location in eero–as I have that 3-node system separately back in Pennsylvania–and in Blink, and then positioned them where I figured they should go, in those bedroom corners.

The eero app listed them under “Entertainment,” but they aren’t appearing as extenders, as I had hoped or expected. (Honestly, the small size of the apartment had me wondering if this would even work.) But no matter where I placed them–our main bath has notoriously bad connectivity, especially with the door closed–they wouldn’t appear as extenders.

As it turns out–and at least one reader had warned me about this–the issue is that eero Built-in is only available in the U.S. and Canada. I could probably figure out a workaround, but I just want something that works all the time, and I certainly don’t want other people staying here who might unplug things or whatever. So I will move on: I bought the Dots on sale–$28 each, normally $50–and they’re decent little speakers. No worries there, this was always a possibility.

From there, I moved on to the Blink camera. I had a lot of trouble getting it to come up inside the apartment, but finally got that working–I had had no issues at all in Pennsylvania, it was quite reliable, and it worked from outdoors nowhere close to its sync module or my Wi-Fi nodes–and took it outside to see whether that might work.

In a word, it did not. No matter where I place this camera or its sync module, I can’t get it to reliably come on. Researching this, it appears that the sync module placement isn’t important because the camera connects directly to the Wi-Fi. And so it was time to do something I should have done previously instead of pushing forward the way I had. I needed to measure the strength of the Wi-Fi network. And do so in several different locations.

And what I learned is that the single eero node is strong enough by itself to work reliably everywhere in the apartment. The signal drops the further you go, of course, and the thick concrete walls have their effect. But with the eero basically in the center of the apartment, in the living room area, I got the following measurements:

• Living room (at the table I use as a desk, about 8 feet from the router): 628 Mbps up, 114 Mbps down.
• Second bedroom (at wife’s desk): 362 Mbps down, 143 Mbps up
• Second bedroom (farthest corner): 296 Mbps down, 143 Mbps up
• Balcony (farthest corner off second bedroom): 72.4 Mbps down, 60.7 Mbps up
• Main bedroom (from bed where I work): 321 Mbps down, 154 Mbps up
• Main bedroom (farthest corner): 222 Mbps down, 116 Mbps up
• Main bathroom (door closed): 356 Mbps down, 140 Mbps up
• Balcony (farthest corner off main bedroom, camera placement): 15.1 Mbps down, 11.3 Mbps up

I learned some important things from these tests. First, the one eero 6E node is fine by itself for the most part, though that far balcony corner where I want the camera may require a second node. Second, that main bathroom that was previously a dead zone has fantastic coverage now. (Which doesn’t help with my camera issue, but it’s nice. I listen to podcasts while I shave and shower, and I had connectivity problems in the past.) And third, our Wi-Fi issues on the balcony for music nights has been solved.

Armed with this data, I realized that the basic problem is still the same I had before I had even come here: I need to get a solid Wi-Fi signal out to that camera.

There are two obvious possibilities, assuming I can’t just reposition the camera.

The first is to buy a second eero 6E Pro node and put it in the far corner of the main bedroom. These devices are expensive, but they are currently on sale, just as they were when I bought the first one, at $185, vs. $250 normally. I checked Amazon.com Mexico to see whether the pricing was at least somewhere in the ballpark–electronics are expensive here–but they don’t even sell Eero 6E Pro in Mexico. All I can get is an older Eero 6, which is about $125 for a one-node system. So $250 for two. Which … maybe. (If I went this route, I’d just bring the 6E Pro home with me.)

But perhaps I could just buy it from Amazon.com (U.S.) and ship it to Mexico. Nope: Amazon will not ship this device to Mexico. So I could buy it now on sale, have it delivered to home, and then bring it here on the next trip. That’s an option.

But I discovered an interesting third option that I’d love to avail myself of: Last October, Amazon announced three new accessories for my Blink Outdoor 4 camera, and one of them is a Blink Sync Module Pro designed for large yards that does for Blink what SonosNet does for Sonos: It extends the range of the camera dramatically and bypasses Wi-Fi in doing so. And that means I wouldn’t need to worry about a second eero node.

You know, if I could buy one. Amazon announced this affordable ($50) accessory, as noted, 9 months ago, but it has never shipped: It’s still “coming soon!” And even if it was available, it’s only for the U.S. and Canada, so I’d have to buy it at home, and it’s not clear if it’d even work here.

So. There you go.

Right now, the camera is out on the balcony, but not on that far corner, and it does work. I will experiment with placing it properly and seeing how that goes, but each time I’ve tried, it stops working. I’m pretty sure the only reasonable option here is eero-related and will result in me spending another $185 to $250, depending on which option I choose. I think the eero 6 system would work, and I can get that while I’m here, in just two days. Or I could spend less and stick with the eero 6E with the understanding that it won’t work well until the next trip.

Decisions.