Glowforge says offline but is on

I’ve just wasted an hour following all the trouble shooting options. My glowforge says offline but is clearly on. I’ve restarted the router, laptop, glowforge, and unplugged all of them. Still no connection. WiFi is strong.

Pretty disappointing given how expensive this unit was. I don’t know what to do now but have a project that needed to be done ASAP… I’m about to start pulling my hair out.

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Did you try holding down the Glowforge button until it turns teal and then setting up the wifi again?

Thank you for the response. I forgot to mention that I did try that as well. Several times actually. Unfortunately, no luck with that either.

Oh, the dreaded offline. The best chance is to change the channel for your network to 9 or 11.

The GF seems more susceptible to network gremlins than most other devices, and usually it’s all in the network hiccups and not a GF hardware “failure” per se. Just resetting your modem & router may not help, so change the channel, as sometimes what your neighbor’s devices are doing can affect the performance in your own house system.

I went through a few episodes last summer & changed channel a couple times, and ensuring my GF on a 2.5gHz network, and my other devices on a second network at 5 gHz. Don’t trust routers that are supposed to be able to change based on the devices needs (or Xfinity or other tech folks that say this works)–keep the GF separate on 2.5 and a higher channel #.

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Same issue here. I emailed support. Now I wait 2-3 days for them to read my email then ask me a question, and then wait 2-3 more days for a reply. I’m not bitter :slight_smile: WHY IS THERE NO ADAPTER YET TO HARD WIRE IT??? or some add-on, that I could plug my ethernet in to and just be DONE. No more dropped wifi, no more setting up the wifi again and again. I suspect the latest update hosed my machine. Butttttttttttttt, who knows. I’m just being annoyed. Sorry all. I need my forge to just WORK. That’s why I bought it. 99% of the time its fine. It’s this other 1% that is driving me crazy. I’ve had it 4 months, had to be down for a week because of the black cable, now it won’t connect to my 2.4 ghz network. Why oh why @dan can the team not figure out a way to sell something that they could easily plug into the machine and chose LAN or 5ghz. This is getting old, quick. No chat available. Support I’m sure is off for labor day. So, I guess that means no laser work on the 10 order I have pending that I planned on catching up on.

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Yeah. Wired ethernet anyone?
I had hoped the same. WiFi is good for your mobile phone or your kindle/tablet… not for ‘production work’ - yet, it’s wifi… Ok.

John

And a USB port to control it directly for those who choose! :pleading_face:

@Reaper_Two7, I’m so sorry you ran into trouble with your unit connecting to Wi-Fi. I extracted your machine’s logs and it looks like your Glowforge is connected and you’ve been able to print since contacting us. That’s great!

Could you please let me know if you’re still experiencing any problems?

@WillBarnard, I’ll be happy to help you on a separate support ticket. I took a closer look and one of my colleagues sent an email on 9/1/19. If the email didn’t come through, or if you’re still having trouble after trying what they suggested, please post a new topic here on the forum or email us at support@glowforge.com and we’ll be glad to assist.

hi @ivan1

I spoke with support staff yesterday. About this “Offline”"scanning problem i have been having.
I forget who i spoke with. The rep said I would be getting a new cable sent over. How do I follow up on tracking and see when it is shipped.

I didnt even notice the reply until just now. Support usually doesnt reply for a few days. I had to get my ISP to send me a new router as it stopped broadcasting 2.4ghz. So, I had to use my cell phone hotspot for a few days until the new router showed up. It would have been SUPER AWESOME to have been able to use the 5ghz channel, or DIRECTLY PLUG IN A LAN CABLE. RJ45 jacks must be expensive. I dunno. Nothing was done by glowforge to fix my issue, there was nothing you guys could do. I had to bypass the limitations that were sold to me at a premium. Again, @dan, I ask AGAIN…seriously man. “the most funded item in kickstarter history” and we can’t get a jack to hardwire in to? You got your millions. I’m using your tool for my small business. You chosing to not include industry standard items costs MANY small business owners days upon days or weeks or missed revenue…to save you a dollar? HMMMMMMMMM. (I’m a little bitter right now, I apologize) But they are serious questions.

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Welcome to the forum. How did you speak with support - phone, chat? It isn’t a good idea to post a new problem here on the forum if someone is already working with you. It simply opens a separate ticket and slows the process down.

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I’m sorry you had trouble connecting to your router, Will! I read twice and I apologize, but I’m not sure I understand what your question is.

@dan Thanks so much for replying, I was told on another thread that no way in a million years should I ever expect YOU to reply and should stop trying. lol.

My question was basically, Glowforge ONLY works on 2.4 ghz WIFI, why oh dear god whyyyyyy was a lan port not thought of during the design process so we could hard wire directly to the router and have a STEADY fast connection at all times? I’m not the only one that has wifi issues, and I’m not the only one that has wondered WHY there is no LAN port on the GF.

I essentially convinced a friend @warmthofwood to purchase a GF, she got the Pro, and has had non stop issues with it for the past few months that she’s owned it. Support wants her to always send it back in for a refurb unit, but ONLY if she sends hers back first (putting her out of commission and business for the weeks it takes to mail hers out and get the refurb…why can’t they send one and she returns hers so she can keep working???)

While I have your ear and you are replying to the “why is there no LAN port/usb port/any ports”

Support: with a 72 hour turnaround time for asking questions has got to be the most infuriating thing I’ve ever had to deal with since owning this machine. Don’t get me wrong, I SOOOO love this machine and everything I’ve learned from it. But, what I’ve learned most of all… pray you don’t need support. Google everything you can, try everything you can because if you can’t figure it out on your own support will wait 3 days to tell you “whoops, this is an engineering issue” you need to mail it back and be out of business for at least a few weeks" @warmthofwood called me after that convo and I told her to swap out the silly black cable (that she was smart enough to order extras of months ago) and she was back up and running.

That got her up and running again!!! Didn’t have to send the machine back to get a refurb. But, then today, HER ROUTER decided to not work with glowforge again and she had to go purchase another router. So, again, we are back to the WHY IS THERE NO LAN PORT question :slight_smile:

Sorry for the wall of text and the extraneous questions and info, but @dan the man, c’mon, us little people keep your money flowing, but we keep getting put out of business for weeks at a time. argh. /rant. :smiley: @warmthofwood, keep on keepin on. I’m sorry I convinced you to spend $6,000 and its been a headache since day one. Maybe @dan can take a look at your logs, override the need for you to send in your unit while a new one is being sent in good faith.

-Will

Four years ago, we made a set of design tradeoffs to get the most value, capability, and usefulness into the product that we could. Ethernet didn’t make the cut, for better or for worse.

We’ve often thought about releasing a new product version that added hardware features, but reviewing the data from tens of thousands of units, problems like the one you describe are - percentage wise - rare. So we always decide to keep investing in our current design and customers, rather than build something different that won’t help all the people who backed us already.

We’ll have a new product version at some point, but for the time being, we’re putting that effort into improving your product instead.

It’s true that sometimes it takes a long time when we have to pull in engineering (or occasionally when there’s a random surge in requests). But our average time to answer is something like 8 hours, as I recall, so that is an unusual extreme.

We’re hiring as fast as we can to help with support, though - we want to make it better!

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@Reaper_Two7, it’s been a little while since I’ve seen any replies from you on this topic so I’m going to close it. If you still need help with this please either start a new thread or email support@glowforge.com.