Today I spent an hour faffing with what should have been a very simple 30 second activity, setting up an Ikea TRADFRI smart device gateway. I figured it out in the end and actually it was a simple fix.
The problem I had was that the Ikea Smart app could not get past the first stage of setup which is to connect to the gateway. It couldn’t find it!
First, Ikea’s troubleshooting guides are useless and while I admire their simplified user manuals, some words are actually useful rather than all pictures.
I had my gateway plugged directly into my broadband internet router. The power light was on. The internet light was on solid. The network / device light was blinking slowly. My phone was connected to my wifi.
I tried:
- Restarting the gateway
- Resetting the gateway
- Restarting the app
- Using a different network port
- I even turned off IPv6 on my router
Nothing worked. A trawl of the internet showed lots of people in the same boat. Many saying they had compatibility issues with their routers.
Ikea state that both the gateway and the device the app is on have to be on the same network. What they don’t say is the same subnet.
I have a mesh wifi system that operates on a different subnet. When I connected my mobile phone to the broadband router wifi instead of my mesh network the smart app could instantly connect to the gateway.
Once I’d completed the in-app setup I switched back to my mesh network and I could still use the app and control my devices.
Problem solved. Make sure you have the gateway plugged directly into your broadband router and you connect to your broadband router wifi for gateway setup.
The Automation Guy 