I was excited to see that the Android app was updated to properly connect to the Wifi Precision Cooker! However connecting the device was not a simple experience, so I would like to share my experiences here to help others and hopefully provide some feedback.
1) The Precision Cooker does NOT support 5GHz wifi. This is perfectly understandable, but not mentioned anywhere useful. If your router is configured to use different SSID’s for 5GHz and 2.4GHz, and your phone/tablet is using the 5GHz network (as it usually should be), you will have to manually connect your phone to the 2.4GHz network before reconnecting to the Precision Cooker. This is due to the fact that the Anova app always uses your current wireless network, and only asks for a password.
2) As a fallback when dealing with #1, I decided to try to connect it to my guest wireless (which does not require a password). The Anova app does not appear to allow such a setup - it requires a password before allowing to continue.
3) If you have to do the amount of troubleshooting I just did, you will definitely run into the issue where you reopen the app to try again, and the Cooker is already paired with your phone and doesn’t give the options to set up wifi. There are no menus which allow you to connect to wifi explicitly - it just happens after the app searches to find the device via bluetooth. My best suggestion is to turn off bluetooth on your phone, terminate the Anova app on your phone, and then wait a few minutes - if you don’t give it time, the app will just reconnect to the Cooker without doing the search.
Anyway, I’ve had a leg of lamb going for the last 2 days at 131* so I’ve had plenty of time to troubleshoot! Keep it going Anova!
I forgot to mention, the Precision Cooker also does not support hidden SSID’s - however it appears that if you make your wireless network visible for the short time while you connect the Cooker to wifi, it will work fine once you hide the network again.
BTW, the leg of lamb was like butter - Happy New Years!
Thank you for writing this. Few people take the time to write these types of posts (not even the company has posted this helpful of information).
That said, I followed your advice and disconnected from the 5 GHz wifi on my router and connected to the 2.4 GHz, deleted the app and reinstalled it to start from scratch. I then went through the WiFi setup of the Precision Cooker on the Android app again. I got the same results as when I was on the 5 GHz band on my phone:
The app goes through the WiFi setup, says it connected the Anova to the WiFi, shows the solid (not blinking) blue WiFi LED on the Precision Cooker (which I assume indicates the Precision Cooker is on the network)…but the app and my device will not talk to each other. The app does not see a Precision Cooker on the network. The app shows the “Connect Anova” button at the bottom, and when I press it I get the “We Can’t Find a Precision Cooker” screen that gives me 2 options: “Cancel” and “Done.” However, the “Done” button does nothing, presumably because it doesn’t think a Precision Cooker is present.
Any advice on what to do next? I’m going to create a new post on here with my issue because sorting through the posts and finding how many posts exist for each issue and when they were posted is not very easy.