The weak Wi-Fi card keeps appearing

• Weak Wi-Fi signal
• Wi-Fi drops out
• Strength: Weak -82 dBm
• Strength: Very Weak -87 dBm

9:41192.168.1.107

Symptoms

• Every fifteen minutes or so the coins give way to a card: Weak Wi-Fi signal or Wi-Fi drops out, a red thumb down, your network’s name, and Strength: with Weak, Very Weak, Useless or Dead! and a reading such as -84 dBm.
• Prices may be slow to change, charts may be missing, or the ticker may show Looking for Wi-Fi now and then.

Cause

The card repeats only when the link needs attention: it has actually dropped three or more times in the last hour, or the reading is so poor that drops are only a matter of time. A weak-looking reading on a link that is not dropping does not repeat the card. So a repeating card is evidence, not nagging: the ticker is losing its connection where it sits. The page puts it this way: far from the router, walls in between, so bigger pieces like coin icons, charts and updates can't come down reliably.

Fix

1. Move the ticker nearer the router, or the router nearer the ticker, and out from behind metal, aquariums, microwaves and thick walls. Even a meter can change the reading a lot.
2. Wait a quarter of an hour. The card either stops (the link is no longer dropping) or shows a better Strength: word.
3. If moving is not possible, put a 2.4 GHz extender or a mesh unit between them. The ticker uses 2.4 GHz only.
4. If the router has a “band steering” or “smart connect” setting that merges 2.4 and 5 GHz under one name, see Mesh and band-steering routers.

If that didn’t work

• The reading is good but the card says Wi-Fi drops out: the router is dropping the ticker, not the distance. See What happens when the Wi-Fi drops and Router settings that block new devices.
• You accept the signal and want the card gone: untick Notify me of weak → Wi-Fi signal in the Device section. The ticker runs exactly the same; only the repeats stop. The start-up card and the outage face still appear.