Some basic things to check before we proceed with the more complicated troubleshooting:

Refresh Your Roam App

Very occasionally the app may not have synced correctly with your router, in which case we suggest to try the internet before taking further steps in troubleshooting the issue:

SIM

That your SIM has data and works correctly.

This can be ensuring that the SIM is registered or activated with the SIM provider before using, which is very frequently required with new SIMs.

You can also check the SIM card in a phone or similar device which accepts a SIM by loading a web page and doing a Google search. If this all works correct then we can rule out a SIM data/registration issue

LED Lights

On the side of your router here:

If only the 2G light is on, unfortunately this means that there is just not enough 3G or 4G signal in the area, there won’t be anything that we can do to help that other than to suggest moving to a different location or trying a different network. The 4 main networks in the UK are EE, O2, 3 and Vodafone and all have different coverage.

The same goes for this image:

If only 1 of the LEDs are lt up then it means you do not have sufficient signal strength in the area to create a WiFi hotspot and would therefore need to change location or SIM.

Checking the Antenna Cables

That both of the antenna cables are attached correctly in the “Mobile” ports of the router and firmly screwed on.

Factory Reset

Go to section “Factory Reset”

What Next if Nothing Works?

Work your way through the different sections below, we have tried to cover all of the main questions and queries which we are consulted about.

There are several ways to solve this issue, the first is by bypassing the network name and login part and using the QR code to automatically join then. To do this:

1. Open up the camera and hover it over the QR code.
2. Then press “join” when prompted and this should connect to the Router’s WiFi

On most newer smartphones this function is built into the camera but if it isn’t there are many free apps on the Playstore and App store which serve the same purpose.

The second is by going to your WiFi settings on your phone and clicking “Other”:

 

When you arrive at the “Other” section you can input the “WiFi SSID” which is on the back of the router and enter the password that is also on the back of the router.

You can leave the WPA settings as the detaults WPA2 and WPA3.

 

Press “Join” and if all is well with your router then this should work.

Alternatively you can try a factory reset to solve this issue, go to the “Guides/Walkthroughs” section to see how to do this.

You have opened up the Roam mobile app and you can see this screen, telling you that the WiFi connection was lost:

 

From here the most likely solution is to go to your phone’s WiFi settings and re-select the name of the router. Which will be RUT240_XXXX with the XXXX being an alphanumerical combination.

Your WiFi settings will look like the following:

If you press to connect to the RUT240 network it should connect.

From here you can go back to the Roam app and you now should see a login screen for the app like this:

If you have not changed your password then your password will be admin01.

For issues related to the “Router not connected to the internet” error message, you should be seeing this error message on your app, in particular the error message at the top:

Go to section “Quick Initial Checks/Solutions” for next steps.

If nothing from this section works then it would be worth trying a factory reset. Go to the “Factory Reset” section in the “Guides/Walkththroughs” section. This is more likely to work if the WiFi was working before then suddenly stopped working. But also can work if it’s the first time trying to achieve connection.

If this still does not resolve the problem then the next possible solution would be a firmware upgrade. Go to the “Guides/Walkthroughs” section for how to do this. This fix is more likley to work if you are trying a new SIM card or if you have changed country recently. Though it’s worthwhile doing this anyway if you have had your kit for over a year.

Finally if this still does not fix the issue then you may need to configure your APN settings manually, this is like the access credentials for your SIM card to access the network. This is likely to be a useful fix if you are trying a new SIM card, or have moved country, and it is not working. Go to the “Guides/Walkthroughs” and section “Configuring APN settings manually” for next steps.

There are several reasons why your speeds might be slow, including the SIM card you are using, location, signal strength, number of people in the area and more.

The solutions will be different accordingly. Below are the two main sections which this issue is broken up into:

My Roam is much slower than my phone

High signal areas and comparing against premium smartphones

Most of the cost of an iPhone 13 or similar smartphone is in the LTE data chip, which means if you are in high signal area then the phone will likely output higher speeds than the Roam system is capable of. 

The main advantage of the Roam is the antenna, when signal is low, the antenna is far more powerful than what you would find on smartphones, allowing you to pick up signal when the phone cannot.

Roam and phone are on different networks

If the SIM card you have on your phone and the Roam system are different, this can cause a contrast in speeds. EE may have strong signal in one area but the 3 network has nothing. 

There are 4 main networks in the UK, EE, O2, 3 and Vodafone, the SIM card you have is likely to use one of those networks, which is important to bear in mind if you want to check for coverage. For example Smarty use the 3 network and GiffGaff is using the O2 network.

You can check in advance of purchasing a SIM how the signal will be in a particular area using any of the following coverage checkers:

EE coverage checker

O2 coverage checker

3 coverage checker

Vodafone coverage checker

Roam and phone are on the same network, Roam is struggling to pick up much speed while phone is fast

If your Roam is struggling to pick up much speed (for example not enough to stream in low quality or do a Google search) and your phone is on the same network, and outputting decent speeds, it may be due to some unfortunate band selection.

Basically “bands” are groups of frequencies which LTE networks use to transmit signals. Lower frequency bands are slower and higher frequency bands are faster. Your phone and router will be randomly allocated to different bands depending on traffic, location and other factors.

Lower frequency bands may transmit information slower but are better than higher frequency bands at travelling longer distances and going through physical objects.

Where this knowledge becomes useful is if your Roam has locked onto the lowest band (800MHz) but you are quite close to a cell tower and there are no physical objects in the way, you can manually select a higher band, which should improve the speeds.

Alternatively if you are in a really remote area and struggling to get signal, you may be able to switch to the lower bands in order to pick up a signal from a long distance. 

You are able to configure the bands in this section of the router’s Web user interface. First make sure you are connected to the router, then go to a browser and type 192.168.1.1 and hit enter.

Enter your credentials to log into the router and go to “Status” and then “Mobile”:

 

Then change “Band Selection” to “Manual”:

 

Next will be to select the bands you want, which will be all of them except for the ones you wish to exclude. As a guide, the bands and their corresponding frequencies are displayed below:

As a rough guide, the lower frequency bands, band 20 and band 8, are slower but better at penetrating through physical objects, we would recommend deselecting these bands if you are experiencing slow speeds.

If you are struggling to get a signal at all, you can try deselecting the higher bands, band 42, 38, 7 and 40. We would recommend trying this when you have really bad signal and want to try top it up a bit.

Selecting the Bands

When you are on this screen:

You need to make sure you have both GSM bands selected. Then for the LTE bands you can choose them for your purpose, the example shown is optimised for speed, deselecting bands 8 and 20.

There are several reasons why this may occur. Before proceeding in this section it’s important to understand if you are hitting any restrictions set by your network. Since Brexit there are various limits such as a “Fair Usage” limit enforced onto UK SIMs being used in Europe.

This can vary depending on network provider, but often if you have an unlimited data SIM in the UK then you may be limited to 25GB a month in Europe, so this is important to check before proceeding to the following troubleshoot.

You can read more about this in the Europe section of this article.

Firmware Update

This is the main recommended action to fix issues where the Roam kit is working in the UK then stops working in Europe. Or it works in one European country then in another it stops.

Go to the section “Guides/Walkthroughs” and “Firmware Update” to continue with this method. If this does not work then you can try the next section on APNs.

APN Issues (Access Point Name)

An APN is a gateway between a device such as a phone or router, and a network such as EE. Most of the time these are configured automatically but there can be a few occasions, especially with UK SIMs in Europe where it may not configure automatically.

There are two ways to troubleshoot this issue and it’s worth reading through both before deciding which method to proceed with first.

Go to the “Guides/Walkthroughs” section for information on how to configure this manually.

Just to clarify there are 2 areas where passwords are used with the Roam and Roam X WiFi kits.

1. Roam app or router password

This username and password is by default:

Username: admin

Password: admin01

As displayed on the router here:

 

2. WiFi password

The defaults for these are also on the router, on the back:

 

Changing the Router/Roam App Password

When you first log into the router or the Roam app you will be forced to change your password. So if you have logged into either of these before then your password will no longer be admin01.

If you have forgotten it completely then you will need to go to the Factory Reset section on this page (section 5). This will reset the router password and any other customised settings you have with your kit. Please make a note of any other settings you may need in order for the kit to still work, such as the APN settings of the SIM card.

The login screen of the Roam app

Password of the WiFi network

This can be viewed in the Roam app, so if you have access to the Roam app you can see the SSID (network name) and the password by going to the dashboard and “WiFi Configuration” and you will see the credentials here:

In the section above you can see your current network name (SSID) and the current password which can  be changed.

If Nobody has Access to the Roam App

You will need to perform a Factory Reset, see “Guides/Walkthroughs” section.

If your router’s WiFi network name is displaying “Weak Security” underneath it, this is nothing to worry about. The level of security is absolutely safe.

The router is defaulted to use WPA2 for wider device compatibility but you can change this is if you want to by updating the firmware of the router (firmware upgrade guide in the section below) and change your WiFi encryption to WPA3-SAE.

Warning: this may create incompatibility issues with older devices that are not capable of this level of security.

This can be configured in the back end of the router, accessed through typing 192.168.1.1 in a browser with your Roam app password.

Make sure you are connected to the router:

Then on a browser like Safari or Chrome, go to 192.168.1.1 to access the router’s internal software. 

From here make sure you are on “advanced” mode which can be toggled at the top of the page. Then go to “Network” on the left hand side, then “Wireless”:

Then from here click the pencil and then click onto “Wireless Security” and change the Encryption to “WPA3-SAE”. 

This will remove the “Weak Security” message which you are seeing in your WiFi settings, though as mentioned above, it may make some older devices incompatible with the router.

There are a couple of reasons why this might be:

1. If you have changed your SSID, the name of the WiFi network, then the QR code will not work
2. If your phone camera does not have the capability to scan QR codes, in which case you will need to download a separate app
3. If the light on the QR code is too dark

In any case you can access the WiFi by selecting it from your WiFi network list and entering the password on the router, if you have forgotten the password then you can do a factory reset, there is a guide in the second half of the section above entitled: “My router network name is not showing up on my WiFi connections list”.

Please check out our blog on this topic.

Occasionally you may need to configure APN settings manually. This may be needed if any of the following are true:

1. Your Firmware is up to date (see section 6 – updating the firmware of the router) and:
   • Your Roam kit was working fine in the UK and now in Europe it has stopped working
   • You are in the UK and you have changed SIM card and your firmware is up to date
   • You are in Europe and you have changed SIM card and your firmware is up to date

Where to Manually Configure APN settings:

The easiest place to do this is inside the Roam app.

1. Connect to your router via your phone’s WiFi settings
2. Open the Roam app
3. Go to “SIM Configuration”:

 

And go to “APN”:

From here you can adjust APN settings. 

There are 3 ways you can do this. The first is “Auto-APN” which, when the firmware is up to date, should work almost all of the time. This is enabled simply by toggling on the setting like the following screenshot:

The second option is trying a pre-configured APN from a drop down list. This will only work if your SIM provider is from the country which you are in. A good example would be Vodafone in the UK, where APNs aren’t always automatic, this option can be successful.

You can access this method by using this setting in the app and selecting from the drop down “List of Available APNs”:

Finally and perhaps most fiddly, is configuring the APN manually. This will require a bit of searching by yourself since we, as a hardware provider, don’t always have a full up to date list of APNs ready for you to try.

This method may be useful if the following are true:

1. Firmware is up to date
2. “Auto APN” or “Select from List of Available APNs” are not working

The first thing to do is find the relevant access point name, there are many websites with APN information and it’s difficult for us to know what is correct and what’s not, so it may need a few attempts to get it right.

Go to Google and search for your SIM card, the country you’re in and “APN”, for example:

“Smarty France APN”

You will find results such as: https://help.smarty.co.uk/en/articles/2045756-setting-up-your-phone-to-work-abroad

On this page we can see that it lists all of the settings needed for the manual entry APN. You are looking for the detail for “APN”, in this instance it is: 

APN: mob.asm.net

Putting this into the “APN” section should activate the internet in that location:

 

Since we released the Roam in 2020, the firmware (the software part of the router than tells it how to behave) has been updated many times. One of the main things that has been updated is the Auto-APN function, which has had more and more APNs across UK and Europe pre-configured into it.

This means that updating the firmware could restore your internet access in Europe, it will also bring other performance benefits to your router.

To find out if you need a update, you can go to the following screen on your Roam app. From the home screen, go to “System”:

 

Then you can see the Firmware version here, the number sequence at the end is what we want to check:

For this part of the Maxview Roam troubleshoot, you will need a device such as a laptop or phone, and an internet connection.

Firstly, connect to your router with your phone/laptop in your WiFi settings (phone example shown below):

 

Next, go to a web browser and type 192.168.1.1 and press enter and you should land on the following screen:

 

From here you enter your credentials to access the router. By default they are:

Username: admin

Password: admin01

As displayed on your router but you may have changed the password by logging into the Roam app or into this web page before. Therefore use your new password.

If you have forgotten your password and are unable to login you will need to do a factory reset.

When you have access, you will land on the following screen:

 

From here go to “system” at the top, and scroll down to Firmware and press/click on it:

 

From here you select “From Server” and press OK:

 

From here the router will start to update itself:

 

Once this is done it will ask you if you want to definitely upgrade, to which you can say yes.

When this is 100% complete you will notice it takes about 5 minutes and the router will turn itself off and reboot. At this point you will be disconnected from the router with your phone/laptop. The upgrade should have been successful.

Next time you log into the Roam app the Firmware version should have changed.

If this still has not worked then please proceed to next section to try a manual configuration of the APN.

Factory Reset

It’s possible to perform a factory reset on the router by pushing in the reset button for 10 seconds which can often solve the issue of no connection. The 5 signal lights will light up 1 by 1 to indicate the number of seconds held, anything between 6 and 10 seconds will suffice.

If done correctly, all 5 signal lights will start flashing.

You can also do a factory reset from the Roam app by going to “Settings” and “Factory Reset”

Caution, before doing factory reset, you should know:

• It will reset your router admin password back to the one on the router (admin01)
• It will reset any network name or network password settings, also defaulting them back to the credentials displayed on the router
• It will reset any APN settings (Access Point Name). This is very important if you needed to configure specific APN settings for your SIM card when you set up your router. You should take a screenshot or note down your existing settings before performing a factory reset. You can do this by going to the Roam app and going to “SIM Configuration”:

 

Then go to “APN”:

 

Take a screenshot of this page and any details you might need to reconfigure your APN when the factory reset is done.

Feel free to contact our tech support team by one of the following methods:

Email: [email protected]

Facebook: Go to our Facebook page and click “Message”

Phone: 01553 811000

Please have screenshots and/or videos of what you are seeing to help us quickly diagnose the issue you are having. This can be (where relevant):

• Connections of the antenna to the router
• The LED lights on the side of the router
• Screenshots of the app error message(s)

 

 

Maxview Roam Instructions

Maxview Roam App Instructions

Roam WiFi Quick Guide

See more info click here

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