Hello everyone!
I just received my first Garmin product yesterday: A Venu!
It's a very nice watch, except for 1 thing:
The watch cannot connect to my home wireless network because the SSID is not broadcast (network name is hidden).
In 2020, I find it incredible that any consumer electronic device does not support this feature that has been part of the IEEE standard since at least 2007.
I have 15+ other devices in my home, of various ages and from multiple vendors, that can connect to my wireless network. All these devices can connect to my wireless network with ease and without issue... except for my Garmin Venu.
I was able to confirm the issue by temporarily enabling SSID broadcast and successfully connecting to the network. Once I disabled the SSID broadcast feature again, the Venu again failed to connect to the wireless network.
I believe the fix would be simple: Instead of having the watch waiting to receive a beacon with the network name in it, just have the watch issue a join request for the configured network. I believe the wireless network test feature in the Garmin Connect app on my phone performs the network connectivity test this way: by just issuing a join request instead of waiting for a beacon. This is why the network tests run from the app on the phone are successful, while connectivity from the watch fails.