Recently, my mother received a bird feeder with a camera from the family that uses AI recognition to identify bird species and recharges itself with a solar panel. (hint: if you ever buy one of these, get one with “free AI forever”; others charge a monthly/annual subscription you don’t want to be stuck with). True, it’s a little gimmicky, but she loves her birds and it’s a thoughtful gift.
However, the downside to these types of devices is that they only support 2.4GHz Wi-Fi. The upside to this is extended range (think outdoors to indoors), and it doesn’t require a lot of bandwidth anyway. Most wireless CCTV-type IP Cameras still primarily use 2.4GHz Wi-Fi to achieve the desired range and penetrate materials more effectively, such as walls.
They attempted to connect the camera to the Wi-Fi, which you’d think would have been easy. But it did not. What happens is that when you have a multi-band Wi-Fi (2.4GHz, 5GHz, 6GHz) network, all using the identical SSIDs (Wi-Fi name), it gets confused and just doesn’t work. I’ve had the same thing happen with Ring doorbells in the past, along with other devices.
A phone call to the ISP may have helped them, assuming the ISP would not tell them to call the bird feeder company for support. And no one really wants to sit on hold and try to explain the issue over the phone anyway. So they call the “expert”, aka “me”.
Here are the steps I took:
- Boot up the trusty laptop and connect to the Wi-Fi.
- Get the default gateway using
ipconfigfrom the command prompt - Connect to the router/modem using the IP I just looked up from the default gateway and tried the trusty default admin/password combos (of course, then setting a new password, so don’t even try 😉 )
- Look for a way to set up a new 2.4GHz SSID for devices, which I was unable to find. (this is available on some access points/routers)
- Disable the 5GHz and 6GHz SSIDs
- Connect the camera to the Wi-Fo
- Enable the 5GHz and 6GHz SSIDs
And now the camera and/or router remembers they want to be on 2.4GHz, and all is well; now my mom is enjoying her new smart bird feeder. What a world we live in!
Chris Tierney 