I bought a couple of smart plugs a while back now and couldn’t get them set up so chucked them in a draw.
Today I received a Tapo p105 and had it set up in 2 mins, so simple!
Found my GE plugs and had another go.
I go through the fast and slow flashing stage, but the button on the bottom of the screen stays ‘grey’, unavailable! Then i am stuck and no help abailable to continue!
Anyone else found this?
Thanks in advance!
Michiel
When light on plug is flashing slowly, instructions say; "make sure you are currently on home wifi network. The button below will be greyed out if you are not."
Phone is on home wifi network, full signal, but button is greyed out.
zwetsloot is your phone on the 2.4GHz band of your router as the plugs won't work with the 5GHz band?
Cdent , Hi.
How/where can I see this?
In my Netgear Orbi system I have un-ticked the box in 5gHz wireless settings "enable SSID Broadcast".
After doing the buttons on the plug the phone sees the "SmartLife-71FB" wifi network. when trying to connect, is shows 'No internet connection'.
Don't understand why these plugs are not 'plug and play' like the others!
I am very pleased with all my other GE gear, but these are pants!?
Can I return please?
zwetsloot now you've disabled the 5GHz band, when you try to pair and connect through the plug's own network does this not work?
As for returns, it depends on where you bought them from
zwetsloot Can I return please?
If you want rid, how much do you want for them, never have an issue pairing mine, did 2 more last night in under 5 min.
Mi SSIDs are marked different, one 2_4G and the other 5G. So its obvious which is which.
No one used 2_4G for normal use, only the IoT stuff
Cdent
The SmartLife wifi network says 'no internet connection'.
I am not up to speed with these things!!
Bought the plugs through Mark Casey.
Thanks
zwetsloot The Smart Life SSID has no network, that is correct, You are only on it long enough to send your WiFi settings to the plug, before it disconnects you and joins your wifi, your phone will at that point also reconnect to your home wifi too
zwetsloot so when you start the process off you should be on your normal home network. When you start connecting the app should then search for the plug's network and connect to that for a short time to pass the settings for your home network through. Once that's done the plug should connect to your home network and your phone will too.
I find that i have to navigate backwards on the phone (back arrow) once i have connected to the plugs own wifi connection but it does work. very confusing the first time that you set one up.
TheDragon (GivEnergy)
Yes, I see that after about 1 min. my phone reverts to home wifi.
During the short period I am 'connected'(or not) to SmartLife it says in orange wording 'No Internet Connection' under the SmartLife lettering and an exclamation mark through the signal strength bars.
All the time on the plug app, the 'next step' button (under step 4) remains greyed out.
how do you see the other app? are you navigating to it..? if it reverts back to the plug app is the next button still not available then (without navigating back to the plug app.
positor1
The Next button remains greyed out all the time.
Maybe a tube video how to set up would help?
Still don't understand why connecting the Tapo is so much simpler then these ones.
The giv energy app needs location permission to get the Wi-Fi network your device is connected to. It does not ask for this permission if it is blocked , the button just stays greyed out.
Wb1
THANK YOU!!!
Working now. Wonder how many others have had this issue?
Maybe a better, more complete set of instructions, including fault finding might be a good idea!!
Thanks for all the help everyone!
@"zwetsloot" I suspect quite a few people have been stuck with this , the instructions certainly could better.
Thanks to the advice here I have managed to get two "smart" plugs to work. I had to rename my 2.4GHz network and connect to those. Unfortunately that threw out several other pieces of equipment so rather than mess them about I renamed my 2.4GHz network back to how it was originally and disabled 5GHz in the router. I then tried again.
I now cannot connect either plug. I join the smart plug's network, submit wifi and it thinks for 30 seconds and says "Not connected to the SmartLife Network".
Have tried it on two Android phones with the same results.
We've had this exact problem with our iPhone when we got our new smart plugs.
You go to the app to add a new smart plug. The button is greyed out.
The iPhone is connected to our home wifi.
To fix this (for some reason), we had to Allow Location Access on the iPhone for the GivEnergy app.
Why it needs this for a smart plug? No idea!
I have come to the conclusion that these plugs are rubbish. Difficult to set up, incompatible with standard wifi frequencies and don't work when they are set up. Am I wrong?
LiamThom Welcome to the whacky world of GE, where nothing quite works as it should.
LiamThom They could certainly use some UX tweaking. They do work on standard wifi frequencies - just the wifi standard has several different bands. All wifi kit can emit 2.4GHz, though.
LiamThom I think it's just that the instructions aren't clear.
You definitely don't need to change your existing home Wifi in order to connect the plugs.
The plugs will be coming pre-configued with a temporary Wifi network name of their own. This is purely for the initial setup period - don't re-name your home Wifi to match that. Most plugs from other manufacturers work exactly like this, too.
So instead, start up the plug and temporarily connect your phone's Wifi to match the plug's temporary one. You can then access a management screen on the plug (or, I guess, whatever App they come with if there is one.) Use that to tell it your proper house Wifi details, and then it will reboot and appear on your home network as expected.
The frequency thing is also a red-herring; I've seen people on here say that your mobile phone Wifi connection needs to be on the same frequency range at the plugs... This isn't true. Once it's on your home network, it doesn't matter whether you have a mixed 2.4GHz / 5GHz environment; the home Wifi router will route traffic between them.
Thanks for the reply Riscy but I had worked that out by reading the instructions when I opened the boxes.
I have two of them turning things on and off correctly with a schedule. But neither is showing any data in the Givenergy app and one of them is showing as off-line.