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Unreliable LB100 smart bulb

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Unreliable LB100 smart bulb

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Unreliable LB100 smart bulb
Unreliable LB100 smart bulb
2018-02-05 01:09:57
Model : LB100

Hardware Version : 1.0

Firmware Version : 1.7.1

ISP : Netgear R6300v2

All of my HS105 and HS200 smart plugs and switches throughout the house work very reliably. I think I've only had one or two failures to operate in the last several months, and a repeat attempt worked.

But my LB100 smart bulb stops working about once per week. Once it fails, it stays down until I reset it by turning the power off and on. Usually it's Stringify that reports a failure with the bulb, while sequential actions in the Stringify flow with other TP-Link switches work just fine, so it's not due to the Kasa link being down. The bulb is only about 30 feet from the router and has a good WiFi signal at that location.

So what's the problem? Does the bulb have older firmware that screws up and loses contact more frequently? Why does it fail to re-establish contact? Why does this affect only the bulb and not the switches?
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10 Reply
Re:Unreliable LB100 smart bulb
2018-03-06 16:56:11
1.7.1 is the newest firmware. Did you hard reset the bulb? When it went down, does it show offline or something? BTW, the bulb stops working means you cannot control it even when you are on the same network, or it only happens when you are on different network.This seems to be the bulb, email tplink support to further troubleshoot.
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#2
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Re:Unreliable LB100 smart bulb
2018-03-08 13:28:01
Most of the time the bulb works fine, but about once a week I ask Stringify or Google Home to turn it on in the morning and nothing happens. When I check their log, I see that they report a failure trying to control the LB100 bulb. Then I try the Kasa app, and Kasa can't turn it on either. So I turn the power to the bulb off and on again, and it recovers. I also have a bunch of TP-Link switches, and nothing like this ever happens to them.
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#3
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Re:Unreliable LB100 smart bulb
2018-03-31 23:10:37
I've updated the firmware a couple of times, and it seems a bit more reliable. But new problem today: the bulb did not respond to on/off commands, but Kasa showed the bulb status as good and the bulb going on and off in the app. Again a power-down/power-up fixed it.
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#5
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Re:Unreliable LB100 smart bulb
2018-04-08 01:23:26
And the bulb was down again this morning, needed a power off/on cycle. Clearly if a reboot can successfully reconnect, the permanent loss of connection is a firmware bug, and the firmware updates so far are not fixing it.

On the other hand my TP-Link HS105 switches are 100% reliable. Do they use the same network firmware?
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#6
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Re:Unreliable LB100 smart bulb
2018-06-01 06:50:01
Of course the firmware is up to date. And as I said, I use several TP-Link HS105 WiFi switches, and none of them have this problem. It's only the LB100 bulb that loses connection and fails to reconnect.
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#8
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Re:Unreliable LB100 smart bulb
2018-06-01 08:46:13
taylorshaw151 is posting spam (quite a lot, the moderators have missed the boat here!), he's not trying to help you. He's just parroting the thread content to try to avoid getting caught.
I've found more than a little variation in the reliability of the wifi radios in the bulbs. Moving it closer to the router would help (but I realize misses the point of installing the bulb where you want it...). If you give it a reserved IP in your router it can sometimes help the app find it easier when it does reconnect.
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#9
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Re:Unreliable LB100 smart bulb
2018-06-02 11:39:14
Thanks, I'll try giving the bulb a fixed IP address.

I'm just surprised that the bulb behaves differently from the switches. You'd think they'd share the same WiFi connection firmware.
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#10
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Re:Unreliable LB100 smart bulb
2018-06-02 20:02:56
Yeah, that what I would have expected too. But I did find the API is quite different, and they use different firmware versions - it's like they were written by different teams. Could be different packaging since there's less room - including for the antenna. My HS's are very reliable, but the LB's furthest from the router occasionally drop and not recover.
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#11
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Re:Unreliable LB100 smart bulb
2018-07-13 16:03:53
Yes, my house is like that
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#12
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Re:Unreliable LB100 smart bulb
2018-07-14 15:02:26
Should update the firmware a few times and look a bit more reliable. Problem bulb does not respond to on / off commands?Follow me Try upgrading to the latest firmware.
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#13
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