Well, I hit the reset button on the offline tstat -- it went straight to blinking green and was again identifiable on the android app.
Following the advice of someone in this forum, I went to the tstat's IP address via explorer, went to advanced and manually added the SSID and pword and saved this.
For 12 hours now it's been online, so we'll see.
The upstairs tstat running .77 firmware continues to be stable now since upgrading the firmware, however this tstat is connecting via a wi-fi extender.
