Wireless Sensor Range and Channels Explained

Open area is a laboratory number

A sensor rated at 100 m in open area means 100 m with nothing in between. Our own documentation states the practical figure alongside it — around 30 m under most conditions — because that is what an installer meets. Brick, concrete, foil-backed insulation, metal cladding and other 433 MHz traffic all cut the range, and they do it unpredictably.

Plan against the honest number

Take the stated indoor figure, not the open-area one, and measure the real path including walls. If the plan only works at the open-area rating, it does not work. Where the distance genuinely cannot be reduced, the answer is a LoRa model rather than optimism about the 433 MHz link.

How channels work

Each remote sensor carries dip switches that set its channel — typically 1 to 8. The console displays each channel separately. There is no pairing procedure, no app and no gateway: set the switch before you mount the sensor, note which location is on which channel, and the commissioning is done.

Channel count does not change the range

A common misreading: an eight-channel console does not extend the link. Every one of the eight sensors still has to reach the console on its own. On a spread-out site this usually means the console goes in the middle, not in the office at one end.

Growing a site

Because sensors are catalogue items on a fixed channel scheme, a site that starts with three points can reach eight without changing the console. Stocking one or two spare sensors is worth doing; a failed point is then a replacement rather than a service call.