Finally got everything working without any issues.
Home user with 50+ HomeKit devices upgrading from Apple airports.
It took me about a week, but no more disconnects after two days.
Oddly, I found putting both the APs on same channel worked best.
What finally fixed all issues and not having devices go offline anymore was increasing the Firewall Timeouts. Not that I knew what I was doing but I increased everything and since doing that nothing has gone off-line anymore.
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Thanks for sharing I am sure others will benefit.
I am curious though what happens if you don't use the same channels...because that seems counter-intuitive on many levels. I mean, I get that the devices don't have to reconfigure their radios to change to a new channel...but that shouldn't happen normally, and the tradeoff is now every inbound and outbound packet have the potential to interfere.
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A lot has changed since I made that post.
I think the reason I could have both APs on the same channel was the one AP was in my garage, surrounded by concrete block walls and the other AP was on the other side of my house also surrounded by concrete block walls.
But I have since moved both APs. Now one is mounted on the ceiling of my kitchen, and the other is mounted on the ceiling of my home office.
Once I moved them, the channels did conflict with each other.
But I was still having problems with homekit devices going off-line especially each morning.
I put both APs back on auto and the software put one on channel 1, and the other one on channel 11.
I also returned the fireware "State Timeouts" back to their defaults.
What finally stopped the HomeKit from devices from dropping off was turning off this default "Unscheduled Automatic Power Save"
I also turned off "Hardware Offload" on the router but I'm not sure how much affect that had.
Tomorrow I have a TP-Link EAP225 arriving that I'm mounting on the outside backwall of my house to improve the coverage in my backyard, as the signal is very weak back there. I just finished drilling through 12 inches of 70-year-old reinforced concrete and ran an ethernet cable to the outside for this AP.
My area has constant two or three minute power blackouts so the deal with this I have four APC UPS arriving to put all the APs on, the router, the controller, and the internet gateway, plus my four managed ethernet switches. So this way everything doesn't reset every time there's a brief power outage.
I may add another TP-Link EAP225 in my garage as the signel there is very weak but the homekit delives there seem to be working even with the very weak signal but as it will be very easy to add another AP there I'm pretty sure I'm gonna add one there in the future.
I also developed the problem with the Hue devices going offline I think, due to a conflict with the channel that the Zigbee was on. It was on channel 11 the software moved to it to channel 15 when I asked it to reconfigure, and so far so good.
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@TzTerri Good to know.
FWIW I use a single UPS located with router, modem and POE switch. The APs are powered via the switch, so everything is either up or down based on duration of outage and battery capacity.
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This is my office. Then I have another ethernet switch in my living room another in my den and another in my garage. I'm going to tidy up everything once the POE injectors arrived, plus the four UPS arrive.
If I had POE ethernet switches I could probably put one large UPS in my office, but everything is spread out throughout my house and I have managed four managed ethernet switches, but they're not POE.
So I'm putting a POE injector on the three APs and plus a couple of my HomeKit cameras on the UPS, so if the power goes down I still can access a few cameras in my home.
I'm actually going from six Apple airports to these Omada APs.
So far all my HomeKit automation seems to be rock solid for the first time in years.
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This is my homekit setup as of today. This forum does not seem to allow uploading videos or hyperlinking so copy and paste if you want :)
https://www.icloud.com/sharedalbum/#B0YGf693ZGfNKPZ
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At one time, I had a bunch of X10 stuff that I started replacing with HomeKit devices.
it has become a fun hobby, although a rather expensive one
My home feels alive and responds to my voice. But it's maddening when everything malfunctions so it's been my goal to get 100% reliability or close to it.
I solved my network issues by replacing all my ethernet hubs with managed ethernet switches.
I turned my gateway into just a dumb gateway and got a hardware router. So no more routing issues, or losing my routing tables because my gateway died again.
My final step has been replacing the Apple airport Wi-Fi with the Omada stuff. I spent months researching Wifi solutions. My house is built out of cement block with old style plaster walls. Radio waves do not penetrate the walls of my home very well. My kitchen is a cell phone dead zone, but my phone switches to Wi-Fi automatically.
i've become a big fan of the TP link stuff. Their HomeKit plugs in my opinion are the best. I've been using them to replace the old iHome, smart plugs that were discontinued and have become unreliable.
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Added an outdoor AP super easy I let the software configure it itself. Everything seems to be working perfect
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Turned out I needed to put a fourth AP in my garage. As soon as I installed it and got up and running instantly, all my devices connected.
Being able to build heat maps, really let me visualize and understand my needs.
@TzTerri turns out I need a fourth AP.
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