FitBit Setup Help

If you are like many people trying to get healthy for one reason or another after the new year, you may have received a fitbit flex or force as a gift for the holidays. I am one of those, but also found it slightly useless without the Aria scale. So, the day after Christmas I went to Best Buy and picked one up to sync with my account. It sounded like a great idea that soon turned into a huge pain in the butt and waste of time. Why? It takes forever for most people to set up because

1.  Fitbit has terrible customer support that copies and pastes useless responses that you can find directly on their website AND
2.  Most new routers are not set up to automatically accept the old school wireless technology that this scale comes equipped with. 

After spending well over 4 hours trying to get this scale set up and several emails back and forth (over the course of several days (they are slow to respond and don't believe in phones or any real-time sort of communication), I decided to return the thing. Fitbit, lucky for you, a random guy at Best Buy gave me the advice you could not and I went home and fixed it. Without a knowledgeable cashier at Best Buy, this thing would have been returned (along with my fitbit flex). I had planned to picked up the Withings Scale that syncs with a Jawbone UP to replace the Aria/Flex combo.

Anyhow, if you are struggling to setup your Aria, chances are you need to make adjustments to your router. I have Comcast, and my instructions were as follows:

Can’t connect a particular device? It may be an older device that requires the ‘802.11 b’ Wi-Fi mode and your router may be preset for 802.11 g/n. If you have an ‘802.11 b’ device, the gateway’s Wi-Fi mode needs to be set to ‘802.11 b/g/n’ to allow ‘b’ devices to connect. Here’s how

1. Find and dust an ethernet cable off and connect to your router
2. Log in to the Admin Tool at http://10.0.0.1.
3. Go to Gateway > Connection > WiFi.
4. Click Edit.
5. For Mode, select 802.11 b/g/n.
6. Click Save Settings.

(Note: I have a wireless gateway 1: model number SMCD3DNV, but this works on Model numbers TG852G, TG862G, SMCD3DNV, TC8305C) or Wireless Gateway 2 (Model numbers DPC3939, TC8706)

Don't have the above model? Connect to an ethernet cable and go here: http://192.168.1.1 for these models: 

Netgear WNR1000 802.11n1x1 and WNR3500 802.11n2x2, Linksys WRT310N 802.11n2x2,  Netgear WGR614v8 802.11g, Netgear CG814v 1&2 802.11g, Linksys WCG200v 1&2 802.11g, Linksys BEFCMUH4 802.11g