Req Teq App.

[Wslayer]

ReqTeq app has to be one of the worst out there. It is great for setting and changing temps which is a very simple task. The temp chart is a POS. It has only charted 80 mins of an 8 hr cook. Have 1 alarm set for notification when my temp hits 195°, I don't need an early notification that my meat temps is getting "close" to set temp. Also changing temp settings I don't need a notification that I am preheating to set temp or getting close.
Multi Million $$$ Co. , come on, you can do better than that ! ! !

 

[Bama BBQ]

All I've read is how great the PID controller is & I hesitate to say anything of their app to run it because I don't own any of their products yet but like to know more before I do.
If there's a known buggy software problem & it's been ongoing, can we hear more about it? I know their smokers/grills are rated top quality from "most" everything I read from owners especially compared to others in the market for sale.

 

[Ostrichsak]

Funny, none of the other pellet smokers I have owned even offer a temperature chart. I guess if they give you ANYTHING it must work flawlessly or it's a big thumbs down... right?

I've got a list of items I take issue with as it concerns the app but how so many put the temperature chart on such a high pedestal of requirement for operation is beyond me.

FYI, we're in agreement about the notifications and what not and there's updates currently being testing that will repair a LOT of the alarm/notification issues you and I both hate. Source: someone at Recteq that is directly connected with that process.

 

[Mastertech59]

I'm hoping that the new recteq investors will fix the the APP issues, but I don't recommending holding your breath for this to happen. I could care less about the charts but the temperature notifications are a must and a cook timer would be great.

 

[Ostrichsak]

I'm hoping that the new recteq investors will fix the the APP issues, but I don't recommending holding your breath for this to happen. I could care less about the charts but the temperature notifications are a must and a cook timer would be great.

*couldn't

I agree with notifications and, as I already stated, it's already a thing and awaiting final approval via internal beta testing to make sure it's ready for full release. I was given no timeline or further details. I also gave them a SOLID list of feature requests and I think they were well received.

 

[Mastertech59]

*couldn't

??

 

[Wslayer]

I guess if they give you ANYTHING it must work flawlessly or it's a big thumbs down... right?

We all paid for it...

The charts don't bother me either but if it's gonna be on the product, sure would be nice if it work. If I would have been away from the home, no way to monitor the progression.
Love the unit and do not regret the purchase.

 

[Ostrichsak]

??

Personal pet peeve. The phrase is that you couldn't care less. If you could care less then it means you care if there's room to care less. It seems that most these days don't use it properly though so don't feel singled out.

 

[Ostrichsak]

We all paid for it...

The charts don't bother me either but if it's gonna be on the product, sure would be nice if it work. If I would have been away from the home, no way to monitor the progression.
Love the unit and do not regret the purchase.

I agree and I wish it worked flawlessly. That said, I also feel that having the temperature (same thing used for the chart) report accurately is more important along with the alarms you set. Those aren't functioning properly currently and I, for one, would rather have them devote resources to getting those working reliably 100%. Sure, it would be nice if this worked too but it seems like some act like their smoker isn't functional w/o the chart. Meanwhile, I can't get my phone to alert me in the middle of the night that my set temperature has been hit which can cause a LOT more trouble than simply not being able to track the chart when you're awake to see what the hunk of meat is doing. That's all I'm saying. Some at Recteq act like having WiFi access at all is a luxury rather than the necessity most of us think it is so I think we should focus our voice on the fundamental issues first... then we can run down the list of ancillary features.

 

[Ssheridan74]

I just wrote them over the weekend because my notifications for probes or even temp approaching set temp worked. I received this response.

 

[Hilbe]

I had the app developers call me once I complained about the same thing on Facebook a while back. Posting to the main RT Facebook group yields a phone call....

 

[Ostrichsak]

I just wrote them over the weekend because my notifications for probes or even temp approaching set temp worked. I received this response.

Typical copy/paste response to "app" problems. It's not an app or phone cache issue and they're not restoring it shortly. What a load of BS.

 

[jamorgan3777]

The app (I assume) as all apps is a work in progress. I agree with you there are many foibles with it. I am wondering if the OPs 80 min of 8hr cook was due to the 30sec time interval. To me that is ridiculous to have an option of monitoring ever 30 seconds. 5min is sort of the min. If you need finer than that, you should be standing there watching it. I also have seen some inconsistency with it connecting and updating.

 

[BoostLife]

Not defending any side and I agree that if they say this is a feature to make their grill stand out above others, then it should work.... If it isn't there yet then it is beta.

Now that said.... It is a bit of a trade off. This clearly is a cloud app. Our grills are reaching out to the cloud server with updates and checking for changes. The app on your phone is doing the same thing. Even though they are on the same network (most likely) they never talk directly to each other. Have you ever played the game Telephone before? Remember that one where you have a bunch of people in a line or in a circle, the message is whispered in one persons ear and they pass it on to the next person. By the time it makes it around the circle or the end of the line the real message is revealed vs what was passed on. Amazing at how it changes.

Now I haven't done a packet capture on my RT700 yet. It is on my isolated IoT VLAN (isolated wireless network for stuff like this) so it can't talk to anything on my normal home network. The benefit of a cloud type system is that it means we can start our grill from the gym. They do this to get around firewalls and routers that we have at our home. The trade off for this ability to reach our grills no matter where we are, is that there are going to be more chances for something to fail along the way. I have one of those old school tried and true RF thermometers and I trust something like that more than a cloud based system. Sure it means I won't be able to check the temp of a brisket while I am at the gym but that is fine. If it is getting close I probably would be at home anyhow.

Ultimately I didn't buy the RT-700 for the app. Apps come and go. They get updates and break. The last thing I want is a grill that I can't turn on manually because the app is the only way I can control it. Now some people out there may have bought it for the app. If they are representing the product based on this app then it should work but I also know that I don't know how much faith I have in an app built by a grill company. Heck I don't even allow their grill on my home network. Well not the normal one anyhow.

 

[Wslayer]

am wondering if the OPs 80 min of 8hr cook was due to the 30sec time interval.

Wasn't my first day with the grill. . .

 

[Ostrichsak]

Not defending any side and I agree that if they say this is a feature to make their grill stand out above others, then it should work.... If it isn't there yet then it is beta.

Now that said.... It is a bit of a trade off. This clearly is a cloud app. Our grills are reaching out to the cloud server with updates and checking for changes. The app on your phone is doing the same thing. Even though they are on the same network (most likely) they never talk directly to each other. Have you ever played the game Telephone before? Remember that one where you have a bunch of people in a line or in a circle, the message is whispered in one persons ear and they pass it on to the next person. By the time it makes it around the circle or the end of the line the real message is revealed vs what was passed on. Amazing at how it changes.

Now I haven't done a packet capture on my RT700 yet. It is on my isolated IoT VLAN (isolated wireless network for stuff like this) so it can't talk to anything on my normal home network. The benefit of a cloud type system is that it means we can start our grill from the gym. They do this to get around firewalls and routers that we have at our home. The trade off for this ability to reach our grills no matter where we are, is that there are going to be more chances for something to fail along the way. I have one of those old school tried and true RF thermometers and I trust something like that more than a cloud based system. Sure it means I won't be able to check the temp of a brisket while I am at the gym but that is fine. If it is getting close I probably would be at home anyhow.

Ultimately I didn't buy the RT-700 for the app. Apps come and go. They get updates and break. The last thing I want is a grill that I can't turn on manually because the app is the only way I can control it. Now some people out there may have bought it for the app. If they are representing the product based on this app then it should work but I also know that I don't know how much faith I have in an app built by a grill company. Heck I don't even allow their grill on my home network. Well not the normal one anyhow.

I get what you're saying but I have numerous "cloud" devices that function just fine and have for decades. Exactly as advertised. This isn't earth-shattering technology we're talking about here. There are numerous smokers that cost much less that offer the similar technology that functions just fine as well. I'm not going to make excuses for this as it's a direct correlation between how much Recteq cares to fix it and the problem being fixed. We're not talking about something that's never been done before after all. I'm not going to make any excuses for Recteq to let them off of the hook on this one because this is well-known solutions across various devices starting at tens of dollars in the year 2021.

 

[BoostLife]

I get what you're saying but I have numerous "cloud" devices that function just fine and have for decades. Exactly as advertised. This isn't earth-shattering technology we're talking about here. There are numerous smokers that cost much less that offer the similar technology that functions just fine as well. I'm not going to make excuses for this as it's a direct correlation between how much Recteq cares to fix it and the problem being fixed. We're not talking about something that's never been done before after all. I'm not going to make any excuses for Recteq to let them off of the hook on this one because this is well-known solutions across various devices starting at tens of dollars in the year 2021.

Like I said they shouldn't push it as a production feature until it is ready. I am not making excuses for them and they should probably keep it beta until it is more reliable.

 

[Ostrichsak]

Like I said they shouldn't push it as a production feature until it is ready. I am not making excuses for them and they should probably keep it beta until it is more reliable.

But they didn't so anything short of expecting it to function properly is making excuses for Recteq. They need to fix it. Months ago.

 

[BoostLife]

But they didn't so anything short of expecting it to function properly is making excuses for Recteq. They need to fix it. Months ago.

Well I am so new to RecTeq that I haven't even fired up my grill for the first time yet. The RT700 has been around for a while. Has this always been an issue since they came out with the wifi control features I assume around when the 700 came out? I know it is also used in other grills like the 590 but I don't know when they came out vs the 700. I don't think this was a thing with the 680 but like I said I am new to this.

Before buying I was reading of some complaints about people not getting notifications during busy cook times like holidays. I guess it is possible that they are having the same issues and they just have sold that many more grills where almost every day is a holiday load for whatever cloud system they are using. I really haven't had much time to do a full packet capture on the traffic the grill is sending to the cloud yet but I will at some point. When I was talking to my delivery driver on Monday he said he sure has been delivering a lot of these lately. He went on to say he goes into a neighborhood and delivers one. Then a few weeks later he is back in the same neighborhood delivering 5 more.

However, I also read a lot of stuff about only connecting it to 2.4 GHz wifi. Connecting it to a mixed 2.4/5GHz wifi network can cause reliability issues. They were very clear in this so is that the case with some people? I have that ability with my home network but my home network is far from what the average home looks like. Granted I also work in the IT field so it is more closely related to an enterprise network. I know with some off the shelf Best Buy or off the virtual shelf Amazon consumer network equipment it can still be done but it is far from a normal configuration. I haven't had the grill long enough to play around with whatever this issue is. I will say that it does make sense to have it on 2.4GHz anyhow as you are not going to need the speed that 5GHz can do and 2.4GHz does better going through walls. Being most grills are outside this is an advantage to have the grill on 2.4GHz. I do find this a little interesting in that one would think fine use a radio only capable of talking on 2.4GHz. It would completely ignore the 5GHz. However in some cases, maybe not yours this could be causing an issue. Sometimes people don't follow the directions or if they do read it, don't understand what it means or how to do it. I don't work in the grill industry but when it comes to our employees trying to work from home we are really careful in not providing support for home networks. The next thing you know they can't get to Netflix and we are supporting that. I just kicked someone off our network a week ago because their home network is so bad and we just gave them a hotspot because we are not dealing with that crap. I told them you have issues, I can't go into it as I simply don't have time but that they should either look at rebuilding everything or hiring someone to assist because if it was my network, I wouldn't trust it enough to do things like banking or much of anything based on what I was seeing. Working from home has been interesting. We are not that large of a company but have a few thousand workers still working from home.

 

[mooncusser2k]

Well I am so new to RecTeq that I haven't even fired up my grill for the first time yet. The RT700 has been around for a while. Has this always been an issue since they came out with the wifi control features I assume around when the 700 came out? I know it is also used in other grills like the 590 but I don't know when they came out vs the 700. I don't think this was a thing with the 680 but like I said I am new to this.

Before buying I was reading of some complaints about people not getting notifications during busy cook times like holidays. I guess it is possible that they are having the same issues and they just have sold that many more grills where almost every day is a holiday load for whatever cloud system they are using. I really haven't had much time to do a full packet capture on the traffic the grill is sending to the cloud yet but I will at some point. When I was talking to my delivery driver on Monday he said he sure has been delivering a lot of these lately. He went on to say he goes into a neighborhood and delivers one. Then a few weeks later he is back in the same neighborhood delivering 5 more.

However, I also read a lot of stuff about only connecting it to 2.4 GHz wifi. Connecting it to a mixed 2.4/5GHz wifi network can cause reliability issues. They were very clear in this so is that the case with some people? I have that ability with my home network but my home network is far from what the average home looks like. Granted I also work in the IT field so it is more closely related to an enterprise network. I know with some off the shelf Best Buy or off the virtual shelf Amazon consumer network equipment it can still be done but it is far from a normal configuration. I haven't had the grill long enough to play around with whatever this issue is. I will say that it does make sense to have it on 2.4GHz anyhow as you are not going to need the speed that 5GHz can do and 2.4GHz does better going through walls. Being most grills are outside this is an advantage to have the grill on 2.4GHz. I do find this a little interesting in that one would think fine use a radio only capable of talking on 2.4GHz. It would completely ignore the 5GHz. However in some cases, maybe not yours this could be causing an issue. Sometimes people don't follow the directions or if they do read it, don't understand what it means or how to do it. I don't work in the grill industry but when it comes to our employees trying to work from home we are really careful in not providing support for home networks. The next thing you know they can't get to Netflix and we are supporting that. I just kicked someone off our network a week ago because their home network is so bad and we just gave them a hotspot because we are not dealing with that crap. I told them you have issues, I can't go into it as I simply don't have time but that they should either look at rebuilding everything or hiring someone to assist because if it was my network, I wouldn't trust it enough to do things like banking or much of anything based on what I was seeing. Working from home has been interesting. We are not that large of a company but have a few thousand workers still working from home.

It's been an issue off and on during the time I've owned my RT-700. A while back there were issues with the app not giving any notifications. It was addressed successfully with an update to the app a while ago and alerts worked nicely.

More recently we've seen issues with notifications sometimes being delayed or not happening at all. You can still connect to the grill via WiFi and control it, so it's not a WiFi or 2.4 vs 5 GHz issue - but alerts are affected. The general speculation is that there's some issue with their cloud infrastructure. It tends to be noticed around holidays when more people would be using their grills, so perhaps increased data traffic is a factor. The truth is none of us know for certain. More people using their grill means more people would see the issue but doesn't necessarily mean the increased traffic is the cause.

If people are displeased with the issue, I'd suggest contacting Recteq directly. Call Ray himself. This is a private forum and to my knowledge, they don't monitor it for discussions.