Silverton 620 WiFiRE is a hot mess

BockBurner

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Location
Denver, CO
Grill
Silverton 620
Hey everyone! I was super stoked to get my Costco Show Special put together and start smoking. Those dreams were quickly extinguished though, after trying to get it hooked up to the app. I am fairly techy and handy. I build my own computers, set up networks, do a lot of technical and architectural drafting in AutoCAD, and I'm a furniture maker.

I put the Traeger together, which was fantastic. No matter how simple something is, writing build instructions is really really difficult and Traeger knocked it out of the park with packaging, instructions, and material quality.
Plugging it in and synching it to the app, though....wow...that's a whole other issue. I spent 3 hours on it myself going through the process over and over, trying different things out, tweaking the process, working on my own network trying to fake out my iphone with different signals from the mesh network, deleting and reloading the app, and on and on. Nothing worked.
NOTE: I have a Netgear ORBI Mesh Network Router.
Got on the phone with the Traeger Customer Service and while she was nice enough, she did break the news that Mesh Networks and wifi6 is not compatible because Traeger has no way to talk to any devices on 5ghz. She had no solutions for me either. Since there is no 'switching off' of the 5ghz signal, the only reliable way to do this is to set up a 2.4 network.

Ultimately through MUCH trial and error, this was my fix:
1) I bought a cheap router that I could separate the 2.4 and 5ghz.
2) Unplugged my current router
3) Plugged in the new router
4) Logged in and named the 2.4ghz EXACTLY THE SAME as the 'old' network, leaving the 5ghz the default Netgear name.
5) Made the password EXACTLY THE SAME as the old network
6) Installed the app on a previous generation device (for some reason, it didn't like my new iphoneX)
7) Went through the same setup protocols MANUALLY (not the QR code version)
8) Got the app and the Traeger to finally work together, download updates, and synch up.
9) Back to the iPhoneX and logged in and got it seeing the Traeger there too.
10) Unplug the new router
11) Unplug the Traeger
12) Set the 'old' router (the new mesh wifi6 system)
13) Reset the modem
14) Reset the router
15) Plug the Traeger back in, switch it on, and push the button to light up the screen
16) Verified on my iPhone the it was working, and VIOLA! Since it had learned the 2.4 network as the same name and password, it still worked on the mesh signal. It just couldn't do the initial setup on it.

Its JUST THAT EASY folks.

All in all, it was about 9 hours with three different Traeger Reps, two NETGEAR reps, and a trip to Best Buy.
I've got 30+ devices of all sorts on my network. Old ones, new ones, 2.4, 5.0, wired, smart ones, dumb ones, all kinds of different manufacturers, appliances, cameras, USB, recording equipment, mobile stuff, yadda yadda yadda....lots of stuff. And I have NEVER seen something like this. It is absolutely bananas that their protocol is this difficult. It works now, but holy cow.....

I smoked a turkey on it and was really pleased with it. I'm glad I was persistent and patient enough and didn't just return it.

On a side note: I just installed the pellet sensor today. It that took all of 5 minutes and it worked flawlessly.

I look forward to using it for years to come and NEVER EVER making changes to my network name.

Jerrod
 
Last edited:
Just a note. Almost EVERY appliance that is WiFi capable, will only operate at 2.4Ghz simply because it is pervasive and provides a much larger range than 5Ghz. These appliances do not require the bandwidth that 5Ghz provides.
 
Just a note. Almost EVERY appliance that is WiFi capable, will only operate at 2.4Ghz simply because it is pervasive and provides a much larger range than 5Ghz. These appliances do not require the bandwidth that 5Ghz provides.
Right. Of course. I'm not advocating for a wider use of 5Ghz. Don't need it. Never said it was needed. The issue is how they designed the setup protocols with such narrow focus. I had to take a significant step back, technologically speaking, to get it set up on both my network and the device that was used to set it up. Once that was done, it worked fine on the newer technology. So, even for someone with the knowledge of HOW to do it, you still need to find or buy equipment to actually do the work if you are on the Mesh WiFi6. And its not exactly cutting edge stuff. Its been around for a bit and is becoming fairly widespread in consumer networks.
 
As a heads up, Unifi makes some pretty nice wifi routers, and their routers are capable of running two networks at the same time.

When my grill arrived and wouldn't connect I basically did the same thing, had to create a new 2.4GHz network with a simple password but that did the trick at least.
 
My Silverton will not pair, and now my issues have (supposedly) been escalated to "Corporate." And so now I wait, and wait, and wait, without any contact from them. Can't tell you how much time I've spent dealing with their "tech support." This is utterly ridiculous, and rates as the worst customer experience EVER.
 
My Silverton will not pair, and now my issues have (supposedly) been escalated to "Corporate." And so now I wait, and wait, and wait, without any contact from them. Can't tell you how much time I've spent dealing with their "tech support." This is utterly ridiculous, and rates as the worst customer experience EVER.
Assuming your network is 2.4GHz, have you tried removing all special characters from the Wifi name and Wifi password? Of all the things I tweaked the final item I had to change was removing the "!" I had in my wifi password. Changed that to a "1" and everything worked.
 
If only it were that simple.... no, there are no special characters in my wifi name or password. But thanks for sharing this tip, you never know!
 
Not sure of your age but when I was a kid we would have to grab the rabbit ears, which were wrapped in foil, lean to the left, stand on our right leg and lift our left arm at a 45 degree angle to get certain channels.

Have you tried that while holding your hand on the side of the hopper? At this point it’s as good as anything Traeger is doing! :)
 
My Silverton will not pair, and now my issues have (supposedly) been escalated to "Corporate." And so now I wait, and wait, and wait, without any contact from them. Can't tell you how much time I've spent dealing with their "tech support." This is utterly ridiculous, and rates as the worst customer experience EVER.

Time to take it back to Costco. I've done that twice over the 5 Traegers I have purchased. My second Traeger was a lemon and the portable simply liked to catch on fire.
 
Traeger finally figured out that the Controller was the problem, and sent me a new one. I installed it a couple of days ago, and it paired with my network the first time. What a miserable experience it was getting Traeger to admit that the problem was on their end!!!!
 
I was gonna say if you you had a separate subnet, ipv6 or in this case it was band freq issue. Yeah that was a time waster for sure! The Wifire app does mention at the outset of setup that 2.4Ghz is the only way to communicate over the network, its in small print and you probably missed it. Some IoT devices are better than others in this case, maybe a FW update might address the Bandwidth issue unless the hardware isnt capable period. Not a total loss though be happy you have the distance of 2.4GHz vs the weak, but quick 5Ghz.
Enjoy the smoker, the app itself is my issue, Cant create custom recipes is my gripe and when a recipe is in progress, the timer is locked and cant be modified until its done :eek:


Hey everyone! I was super stoked to get my Costco Show Special put together and start smoking. Those dreams were quickly extinguished though, after trying to get it hooked up to the app. I am fairly techy and handy. I build my own computers, set up networks, do a lot of technical and architectural drafting in AutoCAD, and I'm a furniture maker.

I put the Traeger together, which was fantastic. No matter how simple something is, writing build instructions is really really difficult and Traeger knocked it out of the park with packaging, instructions, and material quality.
Plugging it in and synching it to the app, though....wow...that's a whole other issue. I spent 3 hours on it myself going through the process over and over, trying different things out, tweaking the process, working on my own network trying to fake out my iphone with different signals from the mesh network, deleting and reloading the app, and on and on. Nothing worked.
NOTE: I have a Netgear ORBI Mesh Network Router.
Got on the phone with the Traeger Customer Service and while she was nice enough, she did break the news that Mesh Networks and wifi6 is not compatible because Traeger has no way to talk to any devices on 5ghz. She had no solutions for me either. Since there is no 'switching off' of the 5ghz signal, the only reliable way to do this is to set up a 2.4 network.

Ultimately through MUCH trial and error, this was my fix:
1) I bought a cheap router that I could separate the 2.4 and 5ghz.
2) Unplugged my current router
3) Plugged in the new router
4) Logged in and named the 2.4ghz EXACTLY THE SAME as the 'old' network, leaving the 5ghz the default Netgear name.
5) Made the password EXACTLY THE SAME as the old network
6) Installed the app on a previous generation device (for some reason, it didn't like my new iphoneX)
7) Went through the same setup protocols MANUALLY (not the QR code version)
8) Got the app and the Traeger to finally work together, download updates, and synch up.
9) Back to the iPhoneX and logged in and got it seeing the Traeger there too.
10) Unplug the new router
11) Unplug the Traeger
12) Set the 'old' router (the new mesh wifi6 system)
13) Reset the modem
14) Reset the router
15) Plug the Traeger back in, switch it on, and push the button to light up the screen
16) Verified on my iPhone the it was working, and VIOLA! Since it had learned the 2.4 network as the same name and password, it still worked on the mesh signal. It just couldn't do the initial setup on it.

Its JUST THAT EASY folks.

All in all, it was about 9 hours with three different Traeger Reps, two NETGEAR reps, and a trip to Best Buy.
I've got 30+ devices of all sorts on my network. Old ones, new ones, 2.4, 5.0, wired, smart ones, dumb ones, all kinds of different manufacturers, appliances, cameras, USB, recording equipment, mobile stuff, yadda yadda yadda....lots of stuff. And I have NEVER seen something like this. It is absolutely bananas that their protocol is this difficult. It works now, but holy cow.....

I smoked a turkey on it and was really pleased with it. I'm glad I was persistent and patient enough and didn't just return it.

On a side note: I just installed the pellet sensor today. It that took all of 5 minutes and it worked flawlessly.

I look forward to using it for years to come and NEVER EVER making changes to my network name.

Jerrod
 
Hey everyone! I was super stoked to get my Costco Show Special put together and start smoking. Those dreams were quickly extinguished though, after trying to get it hooked up to the app. I am fairly techy and handy. I build my own computers, set up networks, do a lot of technical and architectural drafting in AutoCAD, and I'm a furniture maker.

I put the Traeger together, which was fantastic. No matter how simple something is, writing build instructions is really really difficult and Traeger knocked it out of the park with packaging, instructions, and material quality.
Plugging it in and synching it to the app, though....wow...that's a whole other issue. I spent 3 hours on it myself going through the process over and over, trying different things out, tweaking the process, working on my own network trying to fake out my iphone with different signals from the mesh network, deleting and reloading the app, and on and on. Nothing worked.
NOTE: I have a Netgear ORBI Mesh Network Router.
Got on the phone with the Traeger Customer Service and while she was nice enough, she did break the news that Mesh Networks and wifi6 is not compatible because Traeger has no way to talk to any devices on 5ghz. She had no solutions for me either. Since there is no 'switching off' of the 5ghz signal, the only reliable way to do this is to set up a 2.4 network.

Ultimately through MUCH trial and error, this was my fix:
1) I bought a cheap router that I could separate the 2.4 and 5ghz.
2) Unplugged my current router
3) Plugged in the new router
4) Logged in and named the 2.4ghz EXACTLY THE SAME as the 'old' network, leaving the 5ghz the default Netgear name.
5) Made the password EXACTLY THE SAME as the old network
6) Installed the app on a previous generation device (for some reason, it didn't like my new iphoneX)
7) Went through the same setup protocols MANUALLY (not the QR code version)
8) Got the app and the Traeger to finally work together, download updates, and synch up.
9) Back to the iPhoneX and logged in and got it seeing the Traeger there too.
10) Unplug the new router
11) Unplug the Traeger
12) Set the 'old' router (the new mesh wifi6 system)
13) Reset the modem
14) Reset the router
15) Plug the Traeger back in, switch it on, and push the button to light up the screen
16) Verified on my iPhone the it was working, and VIOLA! Since it had learned the 2.4 network as the same name and password, it still worked on the mesh signal. It just couldn't do the initial setup on it.

Its JUST THAT EASY folks.

All in all, it was about 9 hours with three different Traeger Reps, two NETGEAR reps, and a trip to Best Buy.
I've got 30+ devices of all sorts on my network. Old ones, new ones, 2.4, 5.0, wired, smart ones, dumb ones, all kinds of different manufacturers, appliances, cameras, USB, recording equipment, mobile stuff, yadda yadda yadda....lots of stuff. And I have NEVER seen something like this. It is absolutely bananas that their protocol is this difficult. It works now, but holy cow.....

I smoked a turkey on it and was really pleased with it. I'm glad I was persistent and patient enough and didn't just return it.

On a side note: I just installed the pellet sensor today. It that took all of 5 minutes and it worked flawlessly.

I look forward to using it for years to come and NEVER EVER making changes to my network name.

Jerrod
Thanks for sharing Jerrod. What a terrible design! I was finally able to get the Traeger connected to my Orbi network using your fix. I also had to use a 4th generation iPad to connect to the Traeger as my current iPhone 12 Pro and iPad Pro apparently are too modern for the wifi electronics of this smoker.
 
Hey everyone! I was super stoked to get my Costco Show Special put together and start smoking. Those dreams were quickly extinguished though, after trying to get it hooked up to the app. I am fairly techy and handy. I build my own computers, set up networks, do a lot of technical and architectural drafting in AutoCAD, and I'm a furniture maker.

I put the Traeger together, which was fantastic. No matter how simple something is, writing build instructions is really really difficult and Traeger knocked it out of the park with packaging, instructions, and material quality.
Plugging it in and synching it to the app, though....wow...that's a whole other issue. I spent 3 hours on it myself going through the process over and over, trying different things out, tweaking the process, working on my own network trying to fake out my iphone with different signals from the mesh network, deleting and reloading the app, and on and on. Nothing worked.
NOTE: I have a Netgear ORBI Mesh Network Router.
Got on the phone with the Traeger Customer Service and while she was nice enough, she did break the news that Mesh Networks and wifi6 is not compatible because Traeger has no way to talk to any devices on 5ghz. She had no solutions for me either. Since there is no 'switching off' of the 5ghz signal, the only reliable way to do this is to set up a 2.4 network.

Ultimately through MUCH trial and error, this was my fix:
1) I bought a cheap router that I could separate the 2.4 and 5ghz.
2) Unplugged my current router
3) Plugged in the new router
4) Logged in and named the 2.4ghz EXACTLY THE SAME as the 'old' network, leaving the 5ghz the default Netgear name.
5) Made the password EXACTLY THE SAME as the old network
6) Installed the app on a previous generation device (for some reason, it didn't like my new iphoneX)
7) Went through the same setup protocols MANUALLY (not the QR code version)
8) Got the app and the Traeger to finally work together, download updates, and synch up.
9) Back to the iPhoneX and logged in and got it seeing the Traeger there too.
10) Unplug the new router
11) Unplug the Traeger
12) Set the 'old' router (the new mesh wifi6 system)
13) Reset the modem
14) Reset the router
15) Plug the Traeger back in, switch it on, and push the button to light up the screen
16) Verified on my iPhone the it was working, and VIOLA! Since it had learned the 2.4 network as the same name and password, it still worked on the mesh signal. It just couldn't do the initial setup on it.

Its JUST THAT EASY folks.

All in all, it was about 9 hours with three different Traeger Reps, two NETGEAR reps, and a trip to Best Buy.
I've got 30+ devices of all sorts on my network. Old ones, new ones, 2.4, 5.0, wired, smart ones, dumb ones, all kinds of different manufacturers, appliances, cameras, USB, recording equipment, mobile stuff, yadda yadda yadda....lots of stuff. And I have NEVER seen something like this. It is absolutely bananas that their protocol is this difficult. It works now, but holy cow.....

I smoked a turkey on it and was really pleased with it. I'm glad I was persistent and patient enough and didn't just return it.

On a side note: I just installed the pellet sensor today. It that took all of 5 minutes and it worked flawlessly.

I look forward to using it for years to come and NEVER EVER making changes to my network name.

Jerrod
Nice catch. Too bad Traeger doesn't have a link to setting up a 2.4ghz network *before* trying to setup WIfi and app. Sorry you had so much trouble but great you are good to go now!
 
I had the same issues and did this manual work around only to have it not work again a couple of weeks later. I returned the Traeger to Costco and bought a Green Mountain smoker from a specialty BBQ store.
 
My Silverton will not pair, and now my issues have (supposedly) been escalated to "Corporate." And so now I wait, and wait, and wait, without any contact from them. Can't tell you how much time I've spent dealing with their "tech support." This is utterly ridiculous, and rates as the worst customer experience EVER.
Traeger grills do not support WPA2 security, change router settings to EPA only or BOTH.
 

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