Topic: Placing Unit in another room

Hello All,

I will soon be installing the Ninendo Wii for my two boys for Christmas and I have a question regarding the unit's placement. I will be installing the Wii U to a TV hanging on the wall. All other components(Tivo, etc) are placed in another room with HDMI runs through the walls. I would like to follow this same concept and have the Wii in the other room so it is not visible. Is this possible? Are there any additional components or accessories I need to make this happen?

The big issue with this is that the unit needs to be in the same room as the Gamepad (the main controller). Having a wall between the main console and the Gamepad may interfere with the signal between the two.

Thanks WaLzgi - If we were to assume there was no wall and the unit was simply placed in the same room as the tv, but not in line of sight - is this possible?

U gamepad works in the range of 5-10 meters, so I guess it could work if it was in the same room

The Gamepad is not optical, so it can be placed out of sight.

As long as the unit is about 6-10 feet (2-3 meters) from the gamepad, it should work fine. My suggestion is to have as few obstacles in the way as possible. Mine works fine behind a few objects

My gamepad works through floors, but it's highly dependant on your house layout.

If I'm behind a wall and my stairs partition, it's about 8" of wall it has to go through, and the gamepad fails to get a signal, even when it's about 3m away from the Wii U.

Whereas if I'm about 10m away, upstairs, but with only 1 wall and the floor (which are generally thin), it worked fine.

Don't forget to run the sensor bar if you want to play any games w/ the Wiimote as a pointing device. Though wireless battery operated bars could save you a wire.

It really bothers me that Nitnedo didn't expand the range of the wireless connection between the Gamepad and Wii U, if only for Netflix/Hulu/Amazon, web browsing, eShop and Miiverse.. MAybe just add in a WiFi chip for non-gaming. Anybody know how the 3DS connects to the Wii U during SSBU and what that distance is?

I have brick walls so they're probably the worst kind of walls outside of something that's metal plated or really thick. With no obstacles in the way other than maybe the top of the wooden cabinet and some chairs the furtherest I can physically get away from the Wii U is ~11m... and it works fine. One brick wall it seems to start to struggle at ~6m.

Which looking at the area that covers, it's about as big as the area my router can handle without the speed starting to tank. Which makes sense. So that might be a fairly decent yardstick, it won't cover the same sort of area a consumer grade router will but it'll work in an area that's about as big as the "this is working flawlessly with everything" area is.

Just tested out my Gamepad vs 3DS in SSBU question. Used the 3DS for controller 1 and put on a 3 minute match Olimar vs Pikachu. Carried the 3DS and the Gamepad up the stairs - Wii U is in my basement - Gamepad lost connection, as always, just past the top of the stairs. 3DS kept going to the other end of the house and even up to the 2nd floor. I'm pretty sure the game was still going b/c whenever I got back in range for the Gamepad the damage counters had changed from what they were previously. 3DS was not connected to my home WiFi, I had just changed the router settings. Wii U is wired.

Which raises the question - if a 4 year old 3DS (my kid got it right after the initial price drop) can connect so well to the Wii U why can't the Gamepad? Well I know why, no Wi-Fi in the Gamepad - and it must be WiFi to the 3DS as bluetooth wouldn't work that far - but why no WiFi chip in a 2 year old Gamepad if the 4 year old 3DS has 1 to connect to the Wii U? The Wii U's WiFi is obviously strong enough to reach the entire house, I could be using the Gamepad in bed on the 2nd floor. Or at least on my sofa on the 1st floor.

3DS uses 2.4Ghz, GamePad uses 5Ghz. 5Ghz is higher bandwidth which means less latency and less compression at the expense of range. 2.4Ghz has significantly less bandwidth available and is prone to interference but because the wavelength is shorter you get more range. Infact 2.4Ghz has less bandwidth available because the signal can travel longer and 5Ghz has better bandwidth because the signal can't travel as far

Look at it this way. Consider the different classes of WiFi that you might be familiar with (g, n and ac) and what you know about each one. G is slow and long range, N is a similar sort of range but higher speeds, ac is really fast speeds but at range it ends up being about as good as n. This is largely because G is purely a 2.4Ghz tech, N is both on 2.4Ghz and 5Ghz and AC is purely a 5Ghz tech which works alongside N running at 2.4Ghz. Then take that knowledge and apply it to the Wii U GamePad (5Ghz) and the 3DS (2.4Ghz). Make sense?

My unit spans multiple rooms.

Hahahahaha, ouch my belly hurts now. You are a unit

an and gn have the same bandwidth. (450 Mbps on decent kit).

For a start 450Mbps is a theoretical number which has absolutely no real meaning. So throw that out the window. Secondly there's two reasons why that's not quite true. In a completely isolated test chamber with only one device on the link? Then they'll do about the same. A real world scenario doesn't work like that.

The 5Ghz signal works better at closer range because there are more channels available and less chance other 5Ghz devices will interfere because 5Ghz is shorter range. Also not a thing with the Wii U GamePad but on a standard wireless network there's less chance it'll have to wait for slower devices because most 5Ghz devices are faster, these days often ac. Then for 2.4G the reverse is true but there's also a problem with the fact that there aren't that many available channels. Odds are for most people if the GamePad ran on 2.4G they'd have constant problems rather than just problems when they put a couple of walls between them and the system.

Put it this way, there are basically three channels you can use on 2.4G before you're starting to add interference. So let me count some that I have running now. My WiFi is one which is pretty strong across the house. Then there's my Sonos Wireless speakers on another channel again fairly loud. Then there's my neighbours WiFi which is less of a deal but I'd also have to add the bluetooth controllers and probably the cordless phone which I think is also 2.4G. Then ontop of that I'd also run the Wii U GamePad.... no, 5Ghz is better because it actually needs that bandwidth.