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How do users connect IOT device to WiFi?
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Siwastaja:

--- Quote from: djacobow on August 08, 2019, 12:59:54 am ---Everyone has explained what most IOT devices do, but honestly, the AP approach is a terrible customer experience. It requires changing your associated network on your phone twice. Furthermore, I believe both Android and IOS do not allow apps to do this, so they user has to switch from the app to the os WiFi screen, then back again, then back to the WiFi screen, then usually back to the app. (Maybe this policy was changed?)

Also, it kind of blows that you need an app to configure an IOT device at all.

--- End quote ---

Doesn't need an app. If it does, you are right, it sucks. OTOH, if the normal usage needs app anyway, then requiring the same app for configuration isn't an extra nuisance.

Configuration is normally done once or maybe twice per product lifetime.

Changing to different WiFi networks, OTOH, is done on a daily basis by many - think about visiting cafes, other public spaces, friends, etc.
I do it maybe 3-4 times a day on average.

If changing the WiFi network twice as a single-time event is a nuisance, the mobile device is broken beyond use, and using it is a major PITA anyway. It's not a problem of the IoT configuration procedure, but a problem of the broken phone UI. The user has already accepted this nuisance if using such broken device.

Of course, having everything configure and "just work" automatically would be very nice. Such attempts often end up being total failures, or cause total vendor-lock-in. The described procedure (without an app) takes approx. 60 seconds of manual user intervention (including changing the WiFi network twice), but it works, will always work, and work with any device in existence.
Jeroen3:
To be fair, they did come up with a standardized way to make this easier to do.
They call is Wi-Fi Protected Setup, WPS for short. Where you set the device in pairing mode, and then press the button on your router.
Daixiwen:
How about hardcoding the password to something like "1234" and ask your user to change his wifi password to that?
Of course there is an obvious flaw to that approach: if several manufacturers start doing this they will have to agree on the actual password to hardcode.

More seriously, at least in the Android world as Fire Dodger says when given the correct permissions an app can configure the phone's wifi settings to do the whole process automatically. I have seen it personally in use with Google's Home application to set up a Chromecast, and I think (but I'm not 100% sure) an app from HP to set up a wifi printer.
soldar:
Four years ago I bought a Lidl Silvercrest WIFI plug switch. Like this:
https://www.lidl-service.com/static/118127777/103043_FI.pdf

The APP makes me open an account with whoever is at the other end. Give email and an account password.

Then, to connect from the phone app to the device it already selects the wifi network. I assume it can get that info from the phone itself?

The phone app asks me for the wifi network password, so I assume it cannot get that info from the phone, and somehow transmits it to the switch which is, obviously, not yet connected to the network.

I have no idea how the phone transmits the wifi name and password to the switch device.

I have never used it because, although it does work over the LAN, I cannot get it to work over the internet, maybe because of the strange network configuration I have. Never used it. Still in its original package.


This does not seem to be the AP system
Kasper:

--- Quote from: bitseeker on August 08, 2019, 02:53:35 am ---[...]
I'm so tired of the prevalence of apps and companies insisting that you must install their app to do rudimentary (and often, duplicate) things.
[...]

--- End quote ---

Me too.  One more reason to try to make it website based.
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