KL400L5 Light Strip disconnects
I have the KL400L5 light strip and I'm using the Kasa app on my phone to control the lights. I chose the model of KL430 for the bug report since that is the closest I could find. Sometimes the App will disconnect from the lights, it will no longer be able to control them. If I wait about a minute then it will come back. I have checked my wifi strength and it looks good. The light strip is about 6' from my Deco M5 wifi hot spot. I also put a constant ping on the light strip to verify it did not lose connectivity and it does not. I also tried to control this light strip with my Home Assistant server. It does the same thing, I can control it sometimes but then the HA server reports the light strip 'became unavailable'. But after about a minute it comes back. I'm assuming this is a bug with the firmware of the light strip.
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I'm having the same problem with my two KL400L5 light strips. They work fine and then randomly seem to disconnect from the network. I have my 2.4Ghz SSID set to Channel 11, using WPA2-PSK (AES) as recommended - but the strips just drop off regularly. One of the strips is right next to the wireless router, so I don't think it's a signal strength issue. Is this something firmware can fix, Kasa, or do we need to replace my strips with the newer Tapo model?
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@Etruscan See detailed response from @Paul_Michael regarding work around. Essentially, block internet access for the strips and control on LAN via Home Assistant or some other means (there are ton of examples on sending commands to the strips).
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There has been new firmware pushed over the last few months to help with the KL400L5 Stability. When I upgraded to the latest firmware, I have not had any more issues with my personal setup.
It is worth mentioning that my Light Strip did appear to be delayed in seeing the firmware update. The firmware release pages are now also being updated to show the most recent updates if you want to compare your firmware version. I know that firmware updates for some smart home devices may need to be checked for manually, or may be blocked by a network setting such as your DNS - If you are having issues with seeing the most up to date firmware, try resetting your device, as this will force the device to check the cloud for an update.
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I'm having the same problem with 5 of these light strips. But it seems it's when only more than 3 are in plugged in. Was having connection issues months ago and unplugged 2 of them. I've been operating 3 of them for months with no issues. Last night I plugged the other 2 back in and now 4 of 5 of the lightstrips won't stay connected. Just seems all 5 can't connect and stay connected at the same time. Using the Kasa app and HomeAssistant. Going to try and WAN trick described earlier.
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Is the behavior limited to Home Assistant, or do the Lights also show disconnected in the Kasa App? Are you able to tell if the devices are staying connected to your WI-Fi network?
If you haven't already, try assigning an IP reservation on your router for the light strips. It's possible that your network is confusing the devices and giving the wrong device the anticipated IP address creating a conflict.
Also, Smart Devices are beginning to see a larger reliance on IPv6 due to Apple HomeKit and the Matter Protocol using IPv6. I would recommend trying to alter the IPv6 settings, such as toggling the setting.
Last but not least, recently, I have seen a few users report that the SPI Firewall feature prevents some smart devices from communicating with the corresponding servers. While I have not seen this behavior extend to Kasa devices, it may be worth trying.
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Here we are like a year and change since the first report, glad I found this thread I've been having this problem with my KL400s for some time now. Thought it was me. Recently while moving to home assistant I got annoyed enough to search. I updated to the latest firmware today and had the issue from within the app. I created an internet isolated network and rebooted and boom no more crashes. I can't use the seemingly useless kasa app. But using Home assistant I now have a stable connection to my lights. Really sad that TP link a company that makes routers can't fix this on their own. I'm not expanding my TP link device ownership at this point due to the fact tat a year has gone by and no solution from the company. :(
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@Jethro65 Has there been any update to this? My Tapo app (linked with my kasa account) says that I'm on the latest firmware, but I'm still having this problem.
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@SoCuul I'm also still having this problem. Sometimes a lightstrip will eventually come back online after a few hours or days, sometimes it doesn't seem like it will ever get back online on its own. I assigned each lightstrip its own IP address but it didn't solve the problem. I also tried a wifi extender and had 2 lightstrips connect to that but also didn't work. I really don't want to create some VLAN to try and solve this.
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SoCuul wrote
@Jethro65 Has there been any update to this? My Tapo app (linked with my kasa account) says that I'm on the latest firmware, but I'm still having this problem.
@Riley_S do you know if there is any work being done on a new firmware update? Many users (including myself) are still experiencing this issue on the latest firmware, and atleast for me it has made these light strips mostly useless in my setup.
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