I just switched to an Orbi system and cannot get my La Crosse weather station to connect to the wifi on my app. It says it needs to connect to the 2.4 Ghz... my phone is connected to the 5 Ghz band and needs to be on 2.4 Ghz to connect i guess.... i have no idea how to do that... I have looked in the Orbi app and see no way to switch the band
I just purchased an LC weather station and ran into the same problem, LC support to date is non-existent. However, in doing research, I did find out some phones (not mine or those of 4 friends) can be forced to connect to the 2.4 ghz band. Generally, you go to the wifi settings on your phone, and then find the advanced settings. If you are lucky, there will be a menu where you can just click to only use the 2.4 ghz band. Once you use the LC app to connect the wifi for the weather station using the phone, you can change the phone setting back since the station should stay connected.
I've seen multiple people post on here that their mobile device *must* be on 2.4 GHz to setup these weather stations, because the weather stations only support 2.4 GHz.
First off, this makes abosultely no sense from a technical perspective. Second, it's directly refuted by La Crosse's own docutmentation:
If both of your 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz Wi-Fi bands have the same name (SSID) and password, you should not have any problem connecting your weather station regardless of which Wi-Fi network band your smartphone is connected to. If you fall in this category and your station is connected, you will not need to read further. NOTE: MostMesh Networks(e.g. Google Wifi, Netgear Orbi, Linksys Velop) will likely work in this way. But when first trying to connect your weather station, you'll want to be near and connected to your mesh's central hub for optimal performance.
That's what it says, but not what it does unfortunately. Bought it because i read this, but it does not connect. Looking at an accurite system that connects directly to router since i have heard nothing from LC.
I can't for the life of me understand why it would matter, but there are a few tricks you can try to force your device(s) to 2.4 GHz.
2.4 GHz has a longer effective range than 5 GHz, so simply moving to the edge of your coverage and restarting the WiFi on your mobile device may force it to 2.4 GHz.
You can go into the Orbi advanced admin interface and lower the transmit power of the 5 GHz radio to 25%. This will further limit its range, improving the odds that devices will connect to 2.4 GHz instead.
The Orbi used to have an option to disable the radios right in the user interface. I have no idea why they removed it. Hopefully, you'll be able to find a solution one way or another. Good luck!
