@Solla-topee 

Hellow TP Link,
 

Its been a few days since you asked me some questions.  Since then many others are posting about the same problem.  Also, it isn't too hard to go to the Alexa comment section for your skill to see there are tons of others giving the skill 1 star and saying it doesn't work anymore.   So, its hard to understand how this is not already on TPLinks radar, but hopefully this will serve to get it registering loud and clear.

I've played around with this A LOT over the last few days.  There might be a couple things going on making it hard to diagnose.   

1) Alexa Device Discovery -  has a feature to give it the permission to handshake with wifi enabled smarthome devices, and then try to add them to Alexa automatically.  This is nothing new.  But, based on the symptoms, I began wondering if this auto register feature was corrupting the KASA connection records in the Alexa database whenever it fired up and found the switches on its own.  Could the newer versions of Alexa have a bug and be trying to add a second connection that is stepping on the one created by Kasa and their skill?   I decided to turn off the automatic "Device Discovery" and see what happened.  BAM, the automatic corruption of the records stopped.  That seems to be a short term solution.  It also fixed the connection problems with my two TRANE thermostats that are registered seperately through the TRANE skill.  That is clearly part of the problem and its not fully related to Kasa.  Maybe Kasa is contributing to this somehow.  Maybe they can even code around it to protect their data.  But Alexa's auto device discovery seems to be a key contributor to the issue.

2) Bad data in Kasa backend database - This is also a factor.  It is not uploading accurate data to Alexa.  You can easily prove this yourself by simply changing the name of a device in Kasa.  I changed my family room ceiling fan to "Family Room - Ceiling Fan - TEST".   I deleted it from Alexa and did a new Discovery.  The switch was added back into Alexa successfully but it still had the old name.  Things are not getting fully reloaded.  If the name is old, I suspect network addresses could be wrong also.   If you have a dynamic network with a DHCP giving out short leases on IP addresses, maybe this is contributing to it also.  SOLUTION: I have not found one yet.  The old name seems persistent and it will not change in Alexa after an update.  

3) Unexplained Issue - There also seems to be a problem where some Kasa switches simply won't work anymore.  Something else may also have broken recently   There are only about 8 of the 56 devices that fall into this category, but its significant.  SOLUTION: The only solution I found was to do a factory reset on the Kasa switch FROM the Kasa App.  This will delete the entry from Kasa and also trigger a factory reset on the device.  You should see it flashing orange/green again.  Then start over in Kasa and then do a Device Discovery in Alexa

So thats my research.  At the moment everything seems to be working but its only been about 5 hours.  If I learn something new, or I end up being wrong, I will post more.  Maybe one of you other users can try these ideas. 

Also, it would be nice if you guys (TPLink) stop playing dumb and admits they know about multiple issues and they are working on it.  I owned a B2B software company for 25 years.  I know how its generally not a good idea to admit there is a problem with your product until AFTER you have a solution and can offer assistance.  Until then you usually deny deny deny.   I think thats likely what is happening here.  If I'm right, the good news is they are likely already working on solutions.  Just tell us so we can stop trying to fix it on our own.

 

Spicymikey wrote

  .....  Since then many others are posting about the same problem.  Also, it isn't too hard to go to the Alexa comment section for your skill to see there are tons of others giving the skill 1 star and saying it doesn't work anymore.   So, its hard to understand how this is not already on TPLinks radar, but hopefully this will serve to get it registering loud and clear.

 

 

2) Bad data in Kasa backend database - This is also a factor.  It is not uploading accurate data to Alexa.  You can easily prove this yourself by simply changing the name of a device in Kasa.  I changed my family room ceiling fan to "Family Room - Ceiling Fan - TEST".   I deleted it from Alexa and did a new Discovery.  The switch was added back into Alexa successfully but it still had the old name.  Things are not getting fully reloaded.  If the name is old, I suspect network addresses could be wrong also.   If you have a dynamic network with a DHCP giving out short leases on IP addresses, maybe this is contributing to it also.

 

Also, it would be nice if you guys (TPLink) stop playing dumb and admits they know about multiple issues and they are working on it.  I owned a B2B software company for 25 years.  I know how its generally not a good idea to admit there is a problem with your product until AFTER you have a solution and can offer assistance.  Until then you usually deny deny deny.   I think thats likely what is happening here.  If I'm right, the good news is they are likely already working on solutions.  Just tell us so we can stop trying to fix it on our own.

 

 

 

  @Spicymikey 2) there's definitely something going on with the App/TP-Link server too; it's not just related to the Alexa Intergration as multiple devices show offline in the App, then will re-appear if I refresh the App (or makes others go offline!) 

What I found last night is that when I did a reboot of my Router - so re-issuing all the DHCP licenses - everything in both Apps was restored. 
But I have never had to do this before these recent events started happening. 

I used to work in Customer Service in the Semiconductor Industry - there is nothing more infuriating to a customer than the words "Oh, we've never seen or heard that one before". Even IF you think that to be the case, please don't say that - but especially not when, as @Spicymikey says, the evidence is right in front of you. 
A good response might have been "OK, so there are appears to be multiple reports, by long-term users with a large number of devices - so not newbies -  of something going on here, and all recently, so lets look into this further to determine what may have changed; meanwhile if the Users here that are experiencing these issues can assist in that quest by providing the following: ........" 

  @Solla-topee 

Thank you! That's great news.

Thank you, my issue is now fixed. A reboot of my router seems to have cleared up any remaining problems as well. 

  @Spicymikey 

I just started getting the same error about 2 days ago, reinstalled and relinked everything and still having the issue with Alexa App communicating to Kasa servers.  Switch works fine with the Kasa App alone.  Must be an Alexa - Kasa server communication issue.  Bill

  @Solla-topee 

Same problems here; Kasa app works, alexa doesn't. Disabling and re enabling skill does not help.