[TG] [TG11] Miracast with the Axiom Pro

[Tom - Raymarine - Moderator]

Hi George,

I asked on our global internal tech-support message system for other people's experiences on Miracast and dongles and the response I got was that people weren't reporting problems with the MS device. We don't have any recommendations for alternatives, in theory anything properly (Miracast) certified should be good.

Thanks, those screenshots are interesting.

In 101815, the signal level is very strong, and it might be that the brief dip wasn't long enough to cause a buffer under-run on the wireless display streaming, or perhaps the wireless display direct connection didn't experience such a dip (we can't tell from the information available through a phone app like this what the cause of the dip in signal level was.) I would expect there to be a bit of buffering on the Miracast signal so that brief interruptions or drops in bandwidth could be tolerated.

Re. 104733, the signal level in the latter part of the graph looks pretty low to me. Based on my own informal trials here, I think we need around -60dBm for a solid Miracast signal.

Re. 101305, I would certainly expect that a drop in Miracast Wifi signal level this long would cause loss of picture at the TV (if the video buffer were enough to cover outages this long, the picture lag would be intolerable), and the fact that the video picture was lost at the same time as you saw the loss of signal on the phone suggests to me that the cause is either:

• Something external - noise - that affects both Wifi links together (MFD-dongle and MFD-phone)
• Something at the MFD, such as an internal issue or dip in power supply, that brings down all Wifi simultaneously
  

What I would be focussing on is looking for a pattern in the Wifi signal losses on the phone app, to see whether they relate to something else going on on the boat.

Regards,
Tom

[george123]

Thanks Tom
I will look for a miracast device that has an external antenna that can be mounted away from the TV. For now the cutomer is using the display below that is close to the TV.

George

[Tom - Raymarine - Moderator]

Hello George,

It seems that the MFD's main Wifi connection channel setup (Home > Settings > This Display > Wifi Connection Settings > Configure > Channel) also controls the Miracast channel, and this has a significant impact on Miracast reliability. In this office, Ch11 (default) gives poor Miracast performance, but Ch3 and Ch4 give reliable operation.

Attached are images of what our local environment looks like on Wifi Analyzer and an SDR analyser on each channel, as an illustration of the difference. Another thing to take into account that I wasn't previously aware of.

Regards,
Tom

[george123]

I hope to be at the boat Thursday and will play with the different channels.

Thanks
George

[Tom - Raymarine - Moderator]

No problem, good luck.

Tom

[george123]

I have not been able to try changing the channel. My customer has hauled the boat for the season. We will wait until the spring to try this. Maybe by that time there will be other changes or recommendations on using the miracast feature.
Thanks for all the help

George

[Tom - Raymarine - Moderator]

No problem, good luck next season. I'm sure through an Southern Hemisphere summer I will learn more about this over the next few months...

Tom

[watsala]

I also have been through the process of setting up Mira Cast with a new TV and a Axiom Pro 9" running latest LH3 3.9.46.

The TV I was trying to connect to is a Samsung Smart TV, Series 5 32" Model: UA32N5300ASXN.

The Axiom was able to detect the TV correctly and tried to connect, and the TV indicated that the Axiom was trying to also connect, but I never managed to get a picture.

I tried resetting both devices to factory, signal quality was good (they are only 3m apart) and I tried different wireless channels. No luck.

In the end I also brought the Microsoft Wireless Display adapter and it seems to be working well. For info of anyone else in this situation.

W

[jrf]

Would love to get an update on this. Currently trying this configuration with Microsoft Miracast adapter and even though setting the PIN to not required, the miracast dongle keeps prompting for a PIN. I can get the systems to connect but once the Axiom 9 is rebooted it looses that connection and prompts for a pin again...then it takes multiple sequences of pairing before it works again. Is there a different recommended dongle that may work more reliably than the microsoft one? Is anyone else seeing this problem?

[Tom - Raymarine - Moderator]

Hello jrf,

If you haven't already done so I'd recommend making sure that your dongle is running the latest firmware: you can do this by installing the Wireless Display app from the Microsoft store on a Windows 10 PC or Windows phone.

Other than that, in my experience most of that sort of intermittent-synchronisation type behaviour comes from a borderline Wifi network bandwidth. If the signal level isn't great then Wifi devices will step between different connection speed levels as the signal level varies, and I suspect that if one of these level changes happens during the negotiation of the wireless display signal then the host (MFD) and client (dongle) can get out of step in what point they think they are in the connection process, leading to these cycles of password-request-and-entry.

I know of no dongle that is more reliable than the Microsoft one, though I have not had any opportunity to test.

Regards,
Tom