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Elgato Key Lights intermittent visibility and controllability when Deco mesh is in Router mode

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Elgato Key Lights intermittent visibility and controllability when Deco mesh is in Router mode

This thread has been locked for further replies. You can start a new thread to share your ideas or ask questions.
Elgato Key Lights intermittent visibility and controllability when Deco mesh is in Router mode
Elgato Key Lights intermittent visibility and controllability when Deco mesh is in Router mode
2021-01-04 15:21:31
Model: Deco X60  
Hardware Version: V2
Firmware Version: 1.0.5 Build 20201013 Rel. 64247

Elgato Key Lights appear to use Bonjour / mDNS zero config networking to "advertise" their services on the network. If this multicast is in anyway segmented or limited on the network, the Key Lights become intermittently available for control (on off, brightness, colour temperature) from the Elgato Control Center software on Windows/MacOS or mobile app. 

After seeing a lot of people with similar problems on a variety of mesh networks with these lights (and a variety of smart home devices that rely on Bonjour Discovery), I've been digging and troubleshooting to try and find the cause.

It seems that on some mesh networks, enabling RIP_1 solves the problem.  This isn't possible on the Deco's, but it made me think... Maybe each Deco in the mesh is acting (at some layer in the network stack) as a router, rather than a bridge, when the system is set to Router mode, rather than Access Point mode.  I had not expected this.

In essence:

If I have my ISP router (Virgin Media Ireland Hub 3) in Modem mode, and the 3x Deco X60 network in Router mode, the Elgato Key Lights cannot be controlled reliably an a Bonjour Browser clearly sees them coming and going intermittenly.  Turning off Parental Controls etc does not work.  QoS is set to "Standard".

However:

If I set my ISP router (Virgin Media Ireland Hub 3) to Router mode (keeping it's WiFi off, but allowing it to act as router, DHCP server etc), and set the 3x Deco X60 network to Access Point mode... The Elgato Key Lights are 100% stable. It appears that the Deco Mesh is acting as a proper "bridged" network.

NB: None of the Deco's have physically moved, nor have the Key Lights moved.  This is reproduceable and is not a factor of signal strength or RF interference.

 

My hope for TP-Link: Please could an engineer hook up with an Elgato engineer and put your heads together to find a way to propagate the Bonjour mDNS info across the Deco mesh when it is in Router mode.  Clearly the Elgato Key Lights are niche products, but this is allegedly affecting smart home bulbs (such as LIFX) too.

 

More on it here: Reddit thread on this issue (one of many)

 

Thanks

 

James

 

 

 

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#1
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4 Reply
Re:Elgato Key Lights intermittent visibility and controllability when Deco mesh is in Router mode
2021-01-19 17:18:54
I need to correct myself here. Access point mode was not a long term fix or workaround. Within a few days of writing this, the lights started to give up on me again. I have still not fathomed out whether I can get any long term stability out of them. Sometimes they are good for days, sometimes it is hours or less. It is so unpredictable that I am having trouble finding even a viable workaround.
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#2
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Re:Elgato Key Lights intermittent visibility and controllability when Deco mesh is in Router mode
2021-01-22 06:58:16

@DeGeekIT 

hi, thanks for your feedback.

We would report your feedback to the senior engineers and have a further check.

Later if you have more findings, please feel free to update here.

If anyone had the same issue, please feel free to let us know.

Thank you very much and have a nice day.

 

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#3
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Re:Elgato Key Lights intermittent visibility and controllability when Deco mesh is in Router mode
2022-02-27 07:43:27

  @TP-Link 

 

I just bought and deployed X20 at home and am experiencing the same issues shared by this original poster. 

 

May I ask if there has been a fix for this?

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#4
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Re:Elgato Key Lights intermittent visibility and controllability when Deco mesh is in Router mode
2022-06-27 10:33:00

  @teedeepee 

 

I ended up with a series of events that have resolved the problem, but I could not tell you exactly which one is the ultimate solution. 

 

I have 3 X60's and one M5.  Since all this happened, I ended up being extradited to a garden office, and I wired the backhaul for the M5 out there.  While the Keylights still can see the X60 access points in the house, the M5 is so much closer and thus provides an unmistakable strongest signal to the Keylights... and of course it is WiFi 5, not 6.  Also, I noticed that the Keylights got a firmware update to v1.03 (216) and I seem to recall seeing that it had something that struck me as "oh that might fix it".

 

Whatever the root cause, I no longer have the problem and thanfully my keylights are now reliable.

 

 

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