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WiFi Issues with 245M and Lessons Learned

PHILTONNC
over 5 years ago

Thought I would share some lessons from my new FR245M.    First great watch,   love it.    BUT if you get the music you are going to need WiFi.    Here is what I learned.

1) If your route SSID uses WEP for Security.   It will not work.  At least for me.   It does not recognize the password.   Probably shouldn't use WEP anyway.

2)  When using a SSID you must make sure it is broadcasting.      I tried an SSID that was not broadcasting,  which you can setup a manually in connect and the test will be successful the first time.   But subsequent times the watch will not connect to the already saved network on the watch.     Spotify app on the watch cannot find the network even though it is on the watch in settings.     Once I set it to broadcasting.    Everything appears to work great!

So there are a couple of issues for Garmin to fix here.

- Recognize non-broadcasting WiFi

- Figure out why when accessing from Spotify why it didn't see the same networks in the watch settings.     

  • 0 over 4 years ago

    Well, my wifi is broadcasting SSID but my new FR245 with the latest SW cannot connect to wifi. Tried multiple wifis now, it just doesn't work. If you're considering buying this watch, and if wifi matters to you (it's the only way to use Spotify etc.) DO NOT BUY this buggy piece of HW... I'll be returning mine tomorrow. Super disappointed.

  • 0 over 4 years ago in reply to Foobar

    Hi.  Sorry about the difficulties.   I am not having issues even with latest software.    The key was that while it was broadcasting the SSID is was using the older WEP security.   I switch to WPA and it started working.    Haven’t had an issue since.  

  • 0 over 4 years ago in reply to Foobar

    and what do you think is an alternative? the buggy vivoactive 4 or the not working app fitbit :D?

  • 0 over 4 years ago in reply to Chii

    Well, I guess I'll be switching back to my old but trustworthy Polar... That's very unfortunate as I really thought FR245 would have been a really nice watch for what it costs -- plenty of interesting features for $300. I was also counting on it being much stabler given that there's been plenty of time to iron out all the initial wrinkles as FR245 was released almost a year ago...

  • 0 over 4 years ago in reply to PHILTONNC

    I'm using WPA2. Interestingly, I just tried setting my routers wifi security from WPA2 to "None" and it started working Open mouth Not fully sure, but it sure feels like a software issue rather than HW problem..? So maybe this is something that might get fixed in some future update -- fingers crossed...

    So, to all of you who are experiencing wifi connectivity issues with just plain "Connection failed" error msg or "Error code 0105", try switching your wifi security to "None". For me, that worked.

  • 0 over 4 years ago in reply to Foobar

    We have to configure wifi through connect app thats all. All protocol works for me. 

  • 0 over 4 years ago in reply to 4715900

    For me, it didn't matter whether I configured it via the mobile app or directly with my watch, neither did work. The only way to make it work was to disable wifi security.

    Btw, now that I've been playing with the mobile app (Garmin Connect), I must say it, too, has quite a few bugs... I've already found a few bugs that will completely freeze the app -- the only way to get it back to working state is to force stop the app and restart it. Those issues can be easily reproduced. I'm using Android.

  • 0 over 4 years ago in reply to Foobar

    I appreciate your post....I was forced to do the same thing in order to get it to connect. It would connect via settings one time if I re-entered my wifi password, but when I went to sync music, it wouldn't connect again. Only after eliminating the security would it download properly. PITA

  • 0 over 4 years ago

    I'm having the same issue. I've got WPA2 security, and every time I want to download some podcasts onto the watch, I need to change to an unsecured network before I can proceed with the download. Super frustrating.

    I'd hope that the garmin team are working on this - I sold my apple watch purely to be able to pair music and functional GPS/interval programs in the same watch. This is far from functional as it stands

  • 0 over 4 years ago

    My wife recently bought the 245 and had the same issues with connecting to the wi-fi.

    The problem is that the watch doesn't seem to support anything other than alphanumeric characters in the password. Ours originally contained hyphens.

    To get it working without removing your network security, ensure that the password is made up of just upper/lower case letters. I've proven this to work with both WPA and WPA2.

    The most secure passwords to use and recommended by the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) is 3 random words joined together. eg televisionCAGEhouse.

     

    Hope this works for everyone.