Well, that's just it. We noticed that for a certain population of a very common Verizon router that we had to advise end-users to pre-pend the password (like this) with a set of double zeroes.
We would classify that as "not working" as we had many beta testers (20%) in the group with this kind of router and in every case we needed to spend considerable time on the phone helping users getting the devices connected. In a broadly launched consumer product that would certainly get us less than 5 star ratings and runaway expenses, I'm sure.
Our product isn't operational without WiFi in that its key selling feature is its ability to communicate via our servers to the devices and devices interact peer-to-peer (i.e. we are not "monitoring" we are interacting).
For example, if you look at certain products (advertising Particle relationship) reviews on Amazon... WiFi frustration is mentioned in nearly all of the less than 5 star ratings and these particular devices indeed do not rely on a WiFi connection to perform. iPhone app ratings are thin, but not impressive; mentioning WiFi connection as well.
I suppose we could pay a developer to come up with a front end for MAC and Windows to set the device serially, but damn it if that doesn't suck.
Because of their experience with connected products, our manufacturer is aggressively pushing us towards another MCU/WiFi pair with better WiFi support, but we've spent time getting our product working well, negotiating the Particle Products learning curve and been getting interest from trade customers. It would be a shame if we had to rework our whole product away from the Particle EcoSystem because End-User WiFi setup is so troublesome (from our experiences).
I am hopeful that some folks who may have some experience with End-User setup may chime in.
I'm wondering if Particle's strategy is to become the "Intel Inside" and provide (best-in-class) platform solutions to developers and end-users or are they simply a silent OEM putting all of the customer-facing development in the hands of their customers.
A "Particle-Powered" strategy where developers can simply customize the integration solutions would be terrific. We'd be happy to leverage that if we thought that Consumers would come to know that meant ease of setup and ongoing reliability. That would allow product creators to create products and not need to develop basic point-of-entry solutions. WiFi setup of Photon powered devices should be effortless and simple, both for developers and end-users. After the past few years of existence and growth, you'd think that Particle's device attachment paradigms should be extremely vetted, sorted and best practices documented. I just don't see any sharing of that, if it at all exists.
I'm not complaining, I'm offering up more of a strategic line of questioning.