"A little troubleshooting on existing devices maybe all that needed. I've not had any problems with my existing devices getting connected or re-connected when I change out a router for something else. As long as I use the same SSID name and PW, I've not seen any issues. I have seen odd issues that effect some operation however that's not relating to getting connected."
I spent many hours troubleshooting with Netgear's support engineers. Some devices can be connected, others cannot. Luck of the draw depending on what you have installed in your home.
"f the IoT is 2.4Ghz then it will never see the 5Ghz radio so you don't have to distance the IoT device from the router. Just distance the SETUP mobile device with the IoT app from the router when you have turned down the 5Ghz transmit power."
The problem is not the device trying to connect on 5.0ghz, but that the phone and device must be on the same 2.4ghz network. Since I need to scan QR codes and talk to the devices via Bluetooth on my phone, the phone needs to be in close proximity to the device to do the setup on the app. Since I can't have sufficient distance from the router to the device that I'm trying to setup, the phone will always prefer 5.0ghz, because 25% power is still too much for the phone to be out of range, so it can't be forced onto the same network as the smart (borderline stupid actually) device. My phone does not have the "maximum compatibility" option in the Hotspot settings to force it to connect on the 2.4 band.
"From what others have posted and from my personal experiences and all the Orbi systems and other MESH systems I've tested, most IoT will work. Again, maybe some help and configuration maybe needed."
In my setup, there is no configuration possible that solves this, and I've stumped all of Netgear's engineers who've tried to help. Like I've said, some people may find the suggestions already provided will work, but not if you have the bad luck to have the wrong devices.
The irony is that the reason I went with a mesh system is that my older router had trouble reaching these devices, even with extenders, and I had noticeably weaker and slower connections on my computers as I moved around the house, but it was mostly what happened whenever we had one of our all-too-frequent power failures.
The extenders wouldn't reconnect properly, and so none of the devices that depended on them would work until everything was rebooted and manually reset. And that's not good if I have a video doorbell, and I don't know that it isn't working until there's someone pounding on the door, or my fingerprint door lock won't open the door because it can't connect to the iinternet.
Orbi bathes the whole house and most of the outdoors in strong consistent signal, and automatically resets itself after power issues, but can't connect to the devices that were the reason for buying it.
