Char-Broil SmartChef Grill

App is worthless

Trying to setup this app currently before the Super Bowl. Customer service is useless turned off wi-fi assist and all the other things and still useless.

Finally, I got it connected! Follow these instructions if you need help.

I’m pretty sure the firmware these grills shipped with had a bug. Some WiFi routers don’t work well for whatever reason. It could be the network name, password, something. I tried changing all types of settings on my WiFi, but I finally got it working using my personal hotspot. I used an iPhone 11 (iOS 13) and set my user name to all lowercase letters “matthew” and my password to my phone number “1234567890” (for example). After reading several reviews, I thought the grill might be rejecting some “special” characters, which could be capitals or symbols, who knows. To change the name of the hotspot, go to Settings > General > About > Name. The password can be modified in Settings > Personal Hotspot. I did use an Android phone to go through the setup of the app (since my iPhone was supplying the WiFi). I would suggest connecting the extra phone to your hotspot first before going through setup in the app. If you can’t see the grill network name pop up under WiFi and are getting a solid white dado button, then you need to turn off your existing WiFi. You could change the name of the your 2.4 GHz network if you want, but unplugging the router temporarily is probably easiest. Once the grill no longer sees your existing WiFi, the dado button should start blinking, and then you can connect to the CB_GRILL_DADO network. If you get an error, reboot the grill and then try to reconnect. Be patient. Once I completed the setup and the grill connected to my phone’s hotspot, the dado started flashing more rapidly, which means a firmware upgrade is ready. The app should also say something. I didn’t turn the grill off and back on, but pressed the dado button since it was already flashing. The circle of lights flashed for a while, 3 minutes or so. I think it did go green completely once and then started flashing green/yellow again. Might have took about 5 minutes total. Once it was back to normal, I turned off my hotspot and then went through the settings on the app to change networks again. The dado light should start slowly blinking again once the hotspot is off. It connected fine to the 2.4 GHz band of my 802.11ac router with WPA2 AES security just fine (make sure to plug your router back in if you unplugged it earlier). The WiFi module itself is 802.11g so you can’t run in n-only mode. I am pretty sure 5.8 GHz WiFi will not work as 802.11g never supported it. I’m so glad it’s finally connected. My WiFi network does include a dash in the name with an uppercase letter and the password is all lowercase letters. I’m hoping the new firmware can support all types of network names/passwords. If you don’t want to change your network name/password to get it working, a simple guest network setup might do it. Check your router’s manual for how to enable that feature. I have two of these grills and this worked fine on both so hope it helps someone else!