Capture CompanionMaking wireless tethering reliable in Capture One
Wi-Fi tethering is glorious when it works and miserable when it does not. These are the field notes from making it rock solid on a real Canon R5 II shoot, plus how to catch the drop the second it happens.
Pin a clean, non DFS channel, give the camera its own band, run TX power at full, and stop trusting a "fine" looking signal. 6 GHz reads weaker in dBm than you expect, so a link can be on the edge while looking healthy. Then watch the signal so you get a warning before it cracks out, not after.
Get the radio right first
- Off 2.4 GHz. It is crowded and slow. Use 5 GHz, or 6 GHz if your camera and router support it (the Canon R5 II does).
- Pin a non DFS channel. DFS channels on 5 GHz can boot you off mid shoot when the router detects radar. Pin a clean, fixed, non DFS channel rather than leaving it on auto.
- Give the camera its own band. Other devices on the camera's band eat its headroom. Keep the tether band as clear as you can.
- TX power at full. Range is the one real lever here.
- A dedicated travel router. A GL.iNet / OpenWRT router (Slate, Beryl and the range) gives you the control to do all of the above, and lets software read the link.
The thing you cannot see: dBm
On 5 and 6 GHz the noise floor sits low, so a perfectly healthy tether runs far lower in dBm than a fixed threshold assumes. Measured on a live R5 II rig on 6 GHz: about -68 dBm was rock solid, and -76 dBm was still strong. The point is that a signal can look "fine" and be one wall away from dropping. You want to know it is sliding before it breaks.
Catch the drop, and the slide before it
Capture Companion was built and field tested on exactly this kind of wireless rig. On a Wi-Fi tether it adds three things:
- Signal watch. It reads your camera's signal (RSSI) off the router and warns you on a fast drop, early enough to move, before the tether actually breaks. It is tuned per band for 6 and 5 GHz, so it does not cry wolf and does not stay quiet when it matters.
- Rig Check. One read only audit of your GL.iNet / OpenWRT router that tells you, in plain English, what to change, channel pinning, band, DFS, TX power, per band names, with the exact command ready to copy and paste.
- The disconnect alarm. If the link does break, you know on frame one, with a sound and a card you cannot miss, instead of shooting blind.
The signal watch and router audit need a router you can read over SSH (GL.iNet / OpenWRT). The disconnect alarm, HUD, drift alerts and disk watch work on any setup, wired or wireless.
Get Capture Companion at launch →Mac, macOS 13+. Requires Capture One 16+. Coming soon, join the launch list on the home page.