KL125(US) goes unresponsive periodically (local only)
Hi,
My KL125s have been having intermittant problems. At first I noticed that they were going "unavailable" many times each day according to the Home Assistant Logbook. I started looking into it and noticed some other people having issues where if the Kasa product didn't connect to Kasa servers the device would attempt to reset itself which caused the "unavailable" status. My first attempt at fixing this was to re-provision some of the bulbs locally and outside of the Kasa app. I used kasa-python to do this. That seemed to fix the problem for a couple weeks, however it has started happening again. Many of the periods of unavailability are 5 seconds exactly, however I just had one this morning when shutting off the lights in a room that was 1:06, so it's inconsistant. What's weird is that it works 100% for a couple weeks then has frequent (like 10+ each day) status reports of "unavailable".
I reached out to @Wayne-TP after reading https://community.home-assistant.io/t/tplink-devices-constantly-disconnect-reconnect-but-only-when-i-block-them-solved/620727/15 and than https://community.tp-link.com/en/smart-home/forum/topic/638558, before I realized that "fix" reffered to the KP125, not KL125. The issue however seems to be the same in symptoms. Wayne suggested I start a new thread here. Thanks Wayne!
My enviroment is this:
Home Assistant Operating System (HAOS) is the primary controller
Network:
KL125 on seperate VLAN that has no direct access to internet. HAOS can open connections to the VLAN.
KL125 config:
- 2 of these are associated with the Kasa app and when "available" can be controlled either via the Kasa app or HAOS, even though they themselves are blocked from the internet. I assume the Kasa app supports a local connection when available.
- 1 of these is provisioned locally and not associated with the Kasa app.
Troubleshooting:
I've tried rolling back to a prior version of HAOS in case a recenty update caused the issue. That made no difference. I've also tried the suggestion to "unbind" within kasa-python that is suggested in the HA Community link above. That did not work:
Got error: SmartDeviceException("Error on cnCloud.unbind: {'err_code': -2001, 'err_msg': 'module not support'}")
I'm considering routing the servers the bulbs are attempting to a local server as it's my understanding they're just looking for a response, sort of a "ping" to check connectivity, however I'd prefer not to get into that as it seems this something that could be solved more elegantly.
Thank you so much!
More info...
It's not just within Home Assistant that the bulbs become unavailable every 10 minutes for about a minute, it's within the Kasa app too.
I was able to capture this screenshot showing that the app thinks the bulb is available (because it was a moment before). A few seconds after this error the bulb went "offline" within the Kasa app. It came back a minute later and I was able to control the bulb.
Here's a screenshot of the uptime of my 3 bulbs. As you can see, when they're turned "on" they go unavailable for about 50-70 seconds every 9.5-10.5 minutes. The last two devices are other TPLink/Kasa devices (a plug and a power strip) which don't have any connectivity issues, though they're in the same network environment.
This seems like the same issue as this firmware update thread.
https://community.tp-link.com/en/smart-home/forum/topic/636288?replyId=1333980
In that thread it's acknowledged that those plugs were programmed to reset their network to attempt to "fix" their lack of cloud connectivity. That appears to be the same thing that's happening here.
Other than this issue, these bulbs have been great.
I'd love your help with this @Wayne-TP if you're able. I'd be glad to assist with any further info that's helpful. Thank you!
