Contents. Setting Up Mi Repeater with non-Mi Routers. Connect the WiFi Repeater to a power source. You can plug it into a USB port on a PC, a power bank or even a USB wall charger.
When powered, the repeater’s LED will start blinking in orange color. Download and install the Mi Home app on your Android smartphone. The app can be downloaded from the Play Store by searching for MiHome or opening. Launch the Mi Home app and choose China Mainland as the region. This will make the app open in Chinese, but is more likely to connect to your WiFi Repeater. Tap on the + (Plus) sign at the top right. You can also tap the notification about 1 smart devices found.
WiFi Range Extender 300Mbps Wireless Repeater Internet Signal Booster 2.4GHz Amplifier for High Speed Long Range Easily Set Up Supports Repeater/Access Point Mode, Extends WiFi to Home & Alexa Devices.
Depending on what is displayed, Select Mi Network Extender6f5c or other smart devices6f5c. If nothing is displayed, consider resetting your WiFi repeater by inserting a pin into the reset hole.
At this point, you’ll be asked to login to your Mi (Xiaomi) account. Sign in if you already have one, else create a new account and sign in. Choose the network you wish to extend using the repeater and enter the original password for the same.
Wait for Mi Home app to configure the WiFi Repeater to connect and extend your WiFi network. The LED light on the repeater will change from orange to blue indicating a successful setup. If the Mi Home app throws an error during setup but your repeater has a blue LED already, you can simply ignore the error. The repeater will work fine ? The SSID for your extended network would have your original network’s SSID followed by plus.
The password for the network will remain same as your original. This can be altered by following the steps below: Additional Configuration of Mi WiFi Repeater Once successfully connected, you will be able to manage additional settings for the WiFi repeater such as changing the SSID, its password or hiding it.
Just tap on the Mi Network Extender on the homepage of Mi Home app. Additional Settings (Click to Enlarge) Set Network Name to Same as Original Turn on the toggle in front of option 1 (as shown in the image above). This will make the repeater use the same SSID and password for the network and hence will only be detected where the original network is not accessible. Change SSID, Password or Hide SSID Tap on the option 2 shown in the image above and then look at the image below. Change SSID/Password. First field is the SSID.
Second field is the password. Turning on the latter toggle will hide the SSID and you will be needed to manually add it to the device you want to connect. Check the Clients connected to Repeater Connected Clients Tapping on the option 3 in first image will present a list of devices currently connected to the repeater’s network. You can view the Mac address and the respective IP address. However, no block or speed limiting functions are available. If you have any other concern regarding the Mi Amplifier, consider leaving it in the comments section below.
You can also post in our or message our Facebook page for a faster response. Hi Narender, Thanks for the detailed post and it helped me to set this device up. Its working, but the strange things is that the signal very strong 55 dBm but when I start the ping its getting timed out every now and then and my connection is very slow or some times timesout happens during browsing. However when i bring the device router its working fine. Not sure what is the use when i can use this extender only near to the router. I have tried in many different location to make it work but failed to do so. Could you please provide your view on this?
My country have strange internet plan than other countries. Can you please help me with an answer? They have setup wifi hotspot at lamp post to spread out connection to whole city. We need to purchase a Card with Username code No. and password code No.
My house is 100-200 meter far from my home to hotspot. I don’t see user name and password stuffs in videos about that mi wifi. Can I connect like that? If I can where can I fill in those codes?
Can I connect the distance like the above statement? Hello Nay, if I understand your situation correctly, you get the internet this way: 1. Scan WiFI networks on your phone/laptop. Connect to the network and it does not ask for a password yet. Then a portal opens where you type your username and password from the card. If this is how your public network works, then the Mi WiFi Repeater will not connect to your network.
The reason – it does not support open WIFI networks. On the other hand, if the WiFI network is secured and requires a password to connect, then there is a good chance that you can extend it using the repeater.
I’ll advise that you look for a different repeater. A repeater which supports open networks will work well for you. And most likely, you will not have to enter the password on the repeater. The repeater is only a range extender, it itself doesn’t connect to the internet or use it.
The password will still be needed on the actual device which needs to make use of the network connectivity. I have a Problem with my “Xiaomi Repeater 2”. I´m from Germany. My Test to use a DSL- Router works well. I would like to use a “Huawei E5573Cs-322 mobil Router”. The Web frontend from the Huawei only allows to modify a few Parameter.
All my Tests not succesful. Wenn I start “Mi Home” the Xiaomi will be found and the Huawei is shown.
When I start the Routine Step1+2 are successfull but Step3 do not find the Repeater, so after this no “Routerplus”- Entry ist shown on my Smarthone. Sorry for writing at this place, but I don´t know how “techmesto” works”. Ciao, ho appena acquistato lo xiaomi pro 300m wifi amplificatore ma non riesco a collegarlo alla rete.
L’applicazione Mi Home riconosce il dispositivo, il mio telefono si collega, ma quando cerco di collegarlo alla rete ricevo sempre l’errore del timeout e chiede di riprovare e avvicinarmi al router anche se sono a pochi centimetri. Ho impostato il server cinese, ho provato a resettare il dispositivo, ma ogni volta ricevo lo stesso errore. Ho il modem adsl di Telecom, qualcuno e’ riuscito a configurarlo? Your main router should have an option to set channel, usually displayed by a single digit number, often ‘6’ by default, sometimes there is other info next to it. Change that to something else, as other people in the area will probably have theirs set to that channel as well, causing interference.
It shouldn’t change anything noticeable. Go to your router settings by typing 192.168.X.Y into your browser, X and Y will probably be 1 or 0, username and password should be in the router’s manual, or both just “admin”. It’s probably an issue with your main router. Connect to it, go to 192.168.X.Y in your browser, X and Y are either 1 or 0, try until you get it, then get the username and password from the router’s manual, or try “admin” for both, that is often the default. After this, there should be a “channel” setting in the wireless settings, probably has 6 as a default value. Change it to something else, and it should solve the problem.
This is because most routers use the same frequency band by default and this causes interference when many routers are near each other. Thanks for the guide Narender!
Having some odd problems though: I’m setting up the repeater via iOS. Configuration works as expected, blue light turns on. When I leave the network name with the “PLUS” no user at all can connect. When I alter the name to the original SSID only my phone (the one I used for setup) can connect but no other. Strangely though the repeater tells me 3 or whatever devices are connected and gives me the correct MAC addresses, but on the phones/tablets its sais couldn’t establish connection. Did you ever hear about such issue? Thanks in advance, Ben.
Hi Kevin, You can actually keep the repeater in an area where the signal strength is not too bad. I mean, unless the repeater manages to get a steady hold of the original network, it might not function properly. So, instead of keeping it in an extremely weak area, you can keep it somewhere the network is not too weak. Yes, since it does not have any batteries, you need to keep it plugged into the power source. The TV should ideally pick up the more stronger network, like most of the other WiFi enabled devices.
So, if the SSID & password are the same and the Repeater is offering the TV a more stronger signal, then the TV should smartly connect to the network of the repeater ?. You can’t change the region to other than China because the Repeater is not sold in other markets. The app will require a re-login if you change the region.
When you choose Mainland China, the app displays most parts in English (provided you have chosen English as the language). The non-English parts (such as the additional settings page) have no English translation available and hence they continue to show in Chinese. Xiaomi only has English interface for products which are officially made available in other markets. Unfortunately, the repeater is not. For two days I followed your procedure — alas it was a pain in the neck to setup not to mention deciphering its Chinese language (actually I managed to change into English but still confusing). Almost took a hammer to crush this Xiaomi Wifi Repeater, I plug it into my PC USB 3.0 and to my amazement it works! In a nutshell, the repeater needs stable electrical current to setup.
Always failed whenever I plug into a power bank or a tablet charger while finishing the setup — after the connection established I plug the tiny wifi repeater on my unused tablet charger. Without doubt, it runs like a champ! Kudos to you, Mr Narender Singh. Rather mixed feelings about this odd WiFi extender: – it can only be managed through a special App (running on phones, not Windows) – the app requires an account with MI, otherwise it won’t see the extender – the needed app MiHome exists multiple times at Google Play, different vendors and products! – even after creating an account the app would not let me log in; ‘failed to connect to MI.’, repeatedly – after installing a newer revision of the app it would join the MI network, would see my extender, but could not establish a network connection to my home network.
Always the same pattern: ‘just a sec.”, running from 27% to 44% and reporting connection failure, repeatedly, the LED kept blinking, the ‘blue light’ never appeared. – the same error occured with two different routers (Speedlink, FRITZ!box), regardless of security settings used (WPA+WP2, WPA, WPA2, WEP, totally open) – Interestingly the same error would occur with the correct or any incorrect network passwords used, so the password was never really ‘used’ by the app during the connection process! – the SAME app MiHome WILL run on a cheap Android TV box and DOES connect to a router from there, so the issue is with the app and Android device it is installed on.
Also this WiFi extender operates apparently ONLY if using WP2 exclusively (what a weird expectation by the manufacturer!). – Summary: only specific Android devices and a unique software plus a unique MI account from Xiaomi will allow to configure this WiFi extender and only if using WPA2 security. Any other method will utterly fail. Once it is tuned to the home network its signal strength is astonishingly high, as is the bandwith it can operate at. It will keep the settings once powered down and up again; it re-connects within 10sec or so, that’s ok. The overall shaky design of the hardware and dependency of crappy (Chinese!) software may explain why this Xiaomi M WiFi extender I is sold for $6 now: just too many issues with its setup and maintenance, A tinkerer’s toy at best, needing diligence, experience and a lot of good luck to get up and running.
It will reward the user with high speed transfers over large ranges, even between buildings and across floors. Thanks for the long writeup, mw. I had similar experience with this app.
It worked on my older android phone, but not on my newer. Sometimes it would get me blue light and still say failed to connect.
In short, it’s a lot of luck game to get this thing connected. But I also learned that this is actually a utility to be bundle with their Mi router. And with the router, it just requires a plug-in and plug-out in the USB port on the router. So maybe the issues are here because the main purpose of this product is to extend range of Mi Routers. It working with other router is just an icing on the cake. However, that’s just my POV.
And yes, if it is somehow made to work with other routers, it could’ve been improved to provide a better experience and reliability. Agreed.I never heard about the MI home automation stuff before, just took advantage of this cheap WiFi extender (it is not really a ‘repeater’, as it has no brain, cannot be configured like a real repeater).
The market for these MI devices seems to be restricted to Asia, and the software seems to be designed around PHONE based control exclusively, so there is no support for Windows PC or Macs. The required account setup is making me feel uneasy, as it is with these remotely accessible Chinese webcams.
We all know now what kind of dangerous games can be played with these, e.g. For dDOS attacks My writeup’s intention was to summarize ALL the issues I encountered during its setup, and there was an astonisihingly long and diverse list of issues to overcome for sure.
So maybe others can benefit when struggling, after all the sales price must have pushed thousands of these things into the market. It is working OK now and I will keep it that way: broadcasting DSL from one building to another, quite an astonishing performance I did not expect to work that well.
This is strange, mate. Let’s do a bit more of troubleshooting: 1.
Does the MiHome app say successfully connected or displays an error but blue light glows? Can you try changing the authentication method of the source AP?
A WPA-2 personal setup has worked fine for me. Is there some sort of Mac filtering enabled in the source AP which only allows certain devices to access the WAN? Other than these, I cannot think of any reason why it is not working. Try connecting it to some other AP to isolate any issues with the repeater hardware. Hey Eshan, that is strange buddy and indeed interesting. I hope you have tried unplugging and re-plugging the repeater.
Let’s try a feq questions: 1. Does the Moto G work fine on the original network?
Did you try by connecting only one device to the repeater (Moto G)? Did you try forgetting the connection and reconnecting?
Can you please give a try using a PING tool? So we know if it is able to send some PING request or it is not working at all. These are just hit and trail now because I’ve not come across something like this before ?. How to fix connection time out? This devices is work properly in the night, then i leave it and sleep, but in the morning, i check it on my pc, it shows, no connection, i wait it but no changes, then i try to reset the devices, and when 99% it shows connection time out but the devices shows blue LED, but when i try to connect it, still shows no internet access, i have try it on my android phone, and my laptop, but still same, i have try to reset it and try it many times, it still error, please help me, give me some solutions:’).
Hi Narender, maybe you can help me: I successfully setup my repeater, however as other have pointed out, the device is not showing in the app but still working after the “timeout” error. The only problem is that every once in a while, when I try to connect to the network after a while that I have not been using it my PC and phone won’t connect to the network unless I unplug and plug again the repeater to the power source. This is annoying. Does this happen to you too? It seems like it goes on stanby mode. Hi, I have a Belkin router at my place and there are a couple of WiFi blind-spots that I am trying to fix.
There seem to be several options for WiFi repeaters/extenders out there in the marketplace and am unable to decide on which to pick. While the MI repeater seems like a good and an inexpensive option, I am afraid I may end up facing issues similar to those mentioned in this thread, and not find a resolution in the end.
Would you know how the ‘TP-LINK TL-WA850RE 300 Mbps Universal WiFi Range Extender’ is? Are there any other good and fairly priced options that you’d recommend? Hi, MI home app is available on google apps. Download the latest mihome or it will give you issues trying to login to the xiaomi servers. The Xiaomi WIFI Extender will only work in a non Xiaomi router – say example Fritzbox 7390 which is the router that I am using – if you change your router security settings to WPA2 only. Using something else and the mi wifi extender will not work. My device is working 100%.
The latest mi home app will install a plugin after connecting successfully the extender to your router. The plugin is in Chinese but fiddling with it you can just add the signal of the extender to that of the router. That is, instead of adding #RouterNameplus to the network, your router signal will just be stronger without the need to reconnect your devices to the.plus wifi. But I prefer using the extender as a second wifi connection point.plus as after measurement this is the way of getting the best range for this wonderful xiaomi device. Wifi Measurements (average values) in the same spot inside the room using FRITZ!App WLAN: connected to the router -65dBm, 65 Mbit/s; after connecting to mi extender.plus wifi -41dBm, 72Mbit/s.