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(Continued from page 1) Wi-Fi dead spots? — Try a
can call them Wi-Fi extender, or maybe a mesh network
on it! It's called
FIXD. It is the By Phil Sorrentino, Technical Thoughts, Sarasota Tech-
first easy-to-use nology Users Group, FL
car health September 2017 issue, The Monitor
maintenance www.thestug.org
philsorr (at) yahoo.com / Philsorr.wordpress.com
monitor.
BEST PART: If your home is very large or if there are many
When that walls between your router and the location at
"Check Engine which you want Wi-Fi access, you may have Wi-
Light" comes Fi dead spots. Your Wi-Fi signal, as all electro-
on, FIXD tells magnetic emanations, is diminished by distance
you exactly and by certain intervening objects, such as
what's causing walls. (Your specific Wi-Fi capability is depend-
it in a way any- ent on many things, but a typical Wi-Fi router,
one can under- using the 2.4GHz band and 802.11n, can work
stand. No more looking up codes or taking it to 100 to150 feet with no intervening objects.). Not
the dreaded auto shop only to be given a list of to get very technical: for distance, the signal
unnecessary repairs – never again! You can al- drops off proportional to the inverse of the
so turn off the check engine light right from the square of the distance; and for intervening ob-
FIXD App if the problem is not serious or if you jects, the loss getting thru the object is depend-
want to see if it will reoccur. How cool is that?!
ent on the type of material and its density; metal
Sounds Great, But How Much Does It Cost? may stop the signal dead in its tracks. So, if
With all the benefits FIXD provides, you'd think it there is a line-of-sight back to the router, dead
would cost a few hundred dollars, right? That's spots are probably far from your router. If there
what makes this company so great. The found- is no line-of-sight back to the router, you might
ers of FIXD made it incredibly affordable so they have dead spots wherever the signal encounters
can help as manypeople as possible avoid get- a lot of loss going thru walls and objects. (I have
ting scammed by mechanics, while also staying seen a reference to Wi-Fi as being a “3 wall so-
on top of their car's health. It retails for only $59 lution”, meaning that the signal may get through
and you can purchase it on their official website. no more than three walls, so if you have a spot
https://www.fixdapp.com/ more than three walls away from the router you
will probably have a dead spot.)
Don't wait until it's too late! A small investment of
a little more than that cost of an oil change can So, if you have a dead spot, or dead spots, you
keep your car running smoothly and out of may want to think about a Wi-Fi extender (a sim-
shady auto shops. ple solution), or even a new “mesh network” (a
more involved, more expensive solution). A Wi-

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