Char-Griller 4+

Omg guys, this is really bad. V2 is twice as bad as the previous version, which was tolerable at best. The app won’t hold a WiFi connection. It’s seems like Bluetooth and WiFi are both dropped as soon as you switch the app. I have push notifications off for most events, yet I’m getting push notifications for all AND THEYRE NON-STOP. What is the point of push notifications if the Bluetooth/WiFi connection is dropped when I switch to another app or my phone is locked? It seems like the WiFi connection is entirely dependent on the Bluetooth connection. What is the point of the WiFi connection if ultimately it depends on a Bluetooth connection??
The app is riddled with other bugs and discrepancies, for instance the connection seems like it’s active (green light) on the main screen, but on the settings page it isn’t connected (red light).. you have to press “connect” like 7 times and wait far too long after entering a WiFi password.. the temp of main probe and food probe have randomly jumped up to like 5000° during these connectivity issues, and those temps end up getting logged in the session graph.
I seriously can’t stress enough how poor this app operates and how disappointing it is that this is what accompanies a rather large purchase.

- Connection drops constantly, even when I’m literally standing right next to the grill.

- the graphs for your cook will only update when you’re in range, when you’ve been out of range for a while (which happens frequently), rather than backfill the data that wasn’t recorded, this creates a step-function that’s not very useful or worth keeping.

- needs some kind of cloud connectivity so I can access temperatures when out of the house.

- wifi handoff is definitely non-functional. Only use Bluetooth, and even that doesn’t work

- probably a hardware issue, but wifi can’t connect to networks that don’t explicitly separate 5 and 2.4 GHz bands, which is actually a significant number of modern home wifi networks.

All of this adds up to an app that is virtually unusable, which is a shame because the auto-Akorn could be an absolutely incredible product, but with the app as non-functional as it is currently, I cannot recommend it as a product to anyone I know.

Char Griller, I have some experience with programming, algorithms, data engineering, etc., if you’re interested please reach out and I will literally consider working for you to fix this app.

It does what it needs to do. I can control the grill and check the temps perfectly. However there is little glitches. Like the confirm button is usually in the wrong spot covering another feature or the keyboard doesn’t easily disappear, then the notifications. It allows you to change the notifications settings. That way you only get alerts for certain things. But it doesn’t work. It doesn’t matter if I turn off grill temp reached notification, I still get that notification. Which wouldn’t be a problem except it lets you know everytime it hits the temp. Say I set at 225. Grill drops to 223 then goes back to 225. I get a notification that it reached the desired grill temp. It happens like every other minute. Everything else isn’t a big deal. Just annoying the notification deal is what gets me here. That needs to be fixed.