A couple of months ago I bought an Arduino MKR WIFI 1010 board with the ENV shield together as a bundle for $US50. I then programmed the device to be an environmental monitor for my greenhouse, simple enough. I then made a nice Blynk app to view the sensor values through the cloud from anywhere using my smart phone. It all worked just great when testing it, the sensor values were visible through the cloud using the Blynk app on my phone, and a min/max reset button on my phone could reset the min/max values on the board through the cloud. How neat! It was exactly what I was looking for.
I then bought another identical WiFi router (Google WiFi) and placed it at the back of my house, and used the Google WiFi app to put the second router in bridge mode to extend my WiFi network from the main access point to the greenhouse. Testing of the signal strength between the main access point and the router in bridge mode (hereafter called "WiFi extender"), showed that the connection between the two routers was good and strong and had high data throughput. All my other devices, my smart phone and laptop, can connect to the WiFi in the greenhouse without a problem using the WiFi extender. Maximum throughput at the greenhouse is about 5Mbps.
However the MKR WIFI 1010 would never connect to the network at the greenhouse. I tried numerous times with no luck. I tried all sorts of things, but none of them worked. So I began doing more coding to output debug information on the serial port so I could see what was going on. I discovered the MKR WIFI 1010 never connected to the network. So I took the board inside my house to troubleshoot, and suddenly it connected to the network with no problem.
So I did more coding to output the WiFi signal strength (RSSI) and tried again. I sat right next to the WiFi extender and tried to connect. The MKR WIFI 1010 board connected but signal strength was -65dBm. That's odd, I'm sitting right next to the WiFi extender, so signal strength should be stronger than that. So I started walking around the house with my laptop with the MKR 1010 connected and looking at RSSI values. As I got closer to the main access point, the signal strength increased. As I walked towards the WiFi extender the signal strength dropped. If I walked outside towards the greenhouse the signal strength dropped to about -90bdBm and then the connection was lost. By looking at WiFi signal strength I was able to figure out that the MKR 1010 was always trying to connect to the main access point and not the WiFi extender.
I did some searching around in these forums and found something about the MKR 1010 having problem with Mesh networks. So I then went about updating the firmware on the WiFiNINA module on the MKR 1010. I loaded the latest version, 1.3.0. Still the MKR 1010 will not connect to the WiFi extender, it always tries to connect to the main access point.
At this point it seems that the firmware of the WiFiNINA module has a bug that does not allow it to connect to Mesh networks correctly. Obviously the WiFi network is there at the greenhouse and is working, but the MKR 1010 does not see it. The cheap and outdated WiFiNINA module says it only supports 2.4GHz, but the Google Wifi router in bridge mode has both 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands, so I don't see that it should be a problem. I will try once more by adding a guest network, apparently this prioritizes 2.4GHz, but I don't hold much hope considering my MKR 1010 won't connect to the WiFi extender even when it's sitting on top of it. I'm not going to wait for an update to the WiFiNINA firmware, that would be like waiting for the second coming.
So after spending $50 and all those weeks of coding and making a nice Blynk app, I find out my MKR WIFI 1010 and ENV shield are useless for the purpose I bought them for. Actually the ENV shield isn't much good anyway because it's too close to the heat of the MKR1010's processor and gives elevated readings. I'll probably sell them on Craigslist or somewhere and buy a SensorPush monitor and gateway instead. As the old saying goes, "If you buy cheap you pay twice". Wish I'd bought the SensorPush from the start, would have saved me a lot of time in the long run.
-Dave