Spent a full weekend trying to get my new smart lock to connect to my home network

I bought this smart lock for my front door, a common brand, and figured it would take maybe an hour to set up. It took me two entire days, probably about 14 hours total, of resetting the lock, restarting my router, and reading forum posts. The issue was my mesh Wi-Fi system (I have one from a well-known company) creating a separate 2.4 GHz network with a different name that I didn't even know about. Once I found that hidden network and connected the lock to it, it worked in five minutes. Has anyone else had a simple tech task blow up into a multi-day headache because of one weird setting you didn't know existed?

2 comments

2 Comments

thea70419d ago

Oh man, that exact thing happened with my robot vacuum. My mesh system had a guest network turned on by default, and it was silently blocking the device from talking to my phone. I was ready to return the thing. Finally found a buried setting in the router app called "client isolation" on the guest network and turned it off. Total game changer, it connected right after that.

robinson.leo19d ago

Glad you got it working but just to clarify, client isolation is actually a security feature, not a bug. It stops devices on the same guest network from seeing each other, which is good for visitors but bad for smart home gadgets that need to talk. Your vacuum couldn't see your phone's control app because of it. It's wild how many routers turn that on by default now, @thea704. Makes you wonder why they don't just ask during setup if you plan to put smart devices on the guest network, right?