My call with tech support was successful! Nice guy, excellent service. To recap in hopes of helping others, these were the steps I followed. To clarify, I did not have to create a guest network. The Orbi doesn’t allow you to designate a 2.4GHZ only network from what I have read on the Netgear forums.
- Log in to your Orbi Router: www.orbilogin.com
- Click Advanced
- Click Wireless Settings
- Disable the 5GHz SSID Broadcast, Wireless Router Radio, and WMM setting
- Click apply at the top and wait a couple minutes for router to update the settings
- Unplug the rachio and wait for a minute, plug it back in. (The WiFi light blinked red to orange for a bit)
- Open the Rachio app and click “Device Settings” toward the top right.
- Click “Update Wi-Fi Network” and follow the instructions for the blink up process.
- The wifi light on the Rachio will start to blink green if it was successful.
- Try to water a zone using the manual control on your app.
- The Orbi has band steering. The tech explained that the Orbi will try to steer the rachio back over to the 5GHz network. Mine did this and the Rachio briefly went offline. After a minute or so the Rachio was directed back to the 2.4GHz signal and started functioning again. It’s been 15 minutes and I still have functionality.
I’ll post back if I have any issues. Hope this is helpful to someone else. FWIW, one of my Orbi satellites is about 10 feet away from the Rachio. My old home has a block construction with brick. I did not have to move the satellite, but it’s possible that you may need to try that if the above doesn’t work.
Thanks to McKynzee and my tech (didn’t catch his name)! I appreciate your help.