Arlo Esential Indoor incompatible with Vodafone Ultra Hub

[TimHJ]

I just bought an Essential Indoor camera and a Pro-4. Setting up the Essential Indoor is impossible because my Vodafone tri-band router (2.4GHz, 5GHz, 6GHz) will not allow me to split the SSID in such a way that I have a dedicated 2.4GHz connection to which to connect the camera. Instead, it features 'compatibility mode' which is supposed to allow devices to pick their own protocol.

In theory, this should work...but ONLY if I can connect my phone (and hence the Arlo app) to the same 2.4GHz network. But I can't - because all the iPhones I possess are either modern enough to support 5GHz OR so old that the Arlo app will not work with them.

I can understand why Arlo would prefer its devices to operate on 2.4GHz (since they will often be a long way away from the router and range is important) but why on earth can products bought in 2023 not be configured via a communication protocol that has been in widespread use since 2009? What workarounds might I try?

[StephenB]

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@TimHJ wrote:

I just bought an Essential Indoor camera and a Pro-4. Setting up the Essential Indoor is impossible because my Vodafone tri-band router (2.4GHz, 5GHz, 6GHz) will not allow me to split the SSID in such a way that I have a dedicated 2.4GHz connection to which to connect the camera.

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Did you try onboarding anyway (and ignore the advice to set up a dedicated SSID for 2.4 Ghz).  My Orbi router also doesn't support different SSIDs for different bands, and I've been able to onboard from my iPhone.

There are some other avenues

1. set up a guest network on the router (which sometimes does let you choose the bands)
2. temporarily turn off the router, and set up a hotspot on the phone that uses the same ssid and password.  Then onboard.  When done, turn off the hotspot and turn on the router.