Nest Wifi Connection is Unreliable and Defective

[Jawsurgeon]

I am a very savvy tech user and I have 5 protects over about 1800 sq ft on 2 floors; each floor has its own router AP; so the wifi signal strength is huge, wifi 2.5 and 5 each have the same name (merged). All my nest thermostats connect without a hitch as does every other device in this unit ..many devices. However Nest protect units are troublesome and unreliable despite this. Many won't connect at all despite dropping them from the app, resetting to factory mode, installing a brand new one (July 2024) and so on. I have spent hours and hours debugging , standing on laddders, installing, re-installing. Some connect initially then drop the connection immediately after installing in their location such as a ceiling. I have one literally 5 feet from and Asus router that won't connect to the network. Google has a major, huge, issue with this device that needs to be addressed. Their app is beautifully designed but the wifi reciever in the protect product is FOOBAR.

[Ashepherdson]

Question, when you load the nest app, are you able to see the protects , and are they green?  Are you concerned that they show offline in the Google home wifi tab under devices?  Mine do that as well, as nest protects usually only connect to the wifi once a day, unless there is an issue.  

[Jawsurgeon]

Alll are green except one that right next to the router; interestingly if I remove from the ceiling and walk around I can run through setup and get it to connect but when I put it back it drops out; o tried this with two different protect devices

[Ashepherdson · Accepted solution]

Is it possible it's positioned near some interference that is causing the drop out?  If two separate devices are doing this at that one spot.. I would suspect that.   Try swapping two of the devices and see if it's the device, or the location. 

[woomoth]

What Google doesn't tell you is that Nest Protect does not use your LAN most of the time.  All this checking the router business is just a smokescreen.  The Protects set up their own private network, which is very un-robust and poorly implemented.  Only one of your protects connects directly to the LAN.  All the other ones connect via this "ad hoc" network.  When that network goes down or drops a client, the app says the Protects are offline and to check your LAN.  To the best of my knowledge (including countless conversations with support), there is no way to diagnose/fix/reboot/etc the "ad hoc" network.   Sorry to be the bearer of bad news.  It was purchased with the pain of five $100 paper weights...