Devices bricked, unable to factory reset and fix
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Devices bricked, unable to factory reset and fix
Model :
Hardware Version :
Firmware Version :
ISP :
I have 8 smart plug minis. One of them, the right bedroom lamp, would often times start blinking the blue LED, conveniently in the middle of the night, waking me up. The rest were all fine. Had 0 issues using either Alexa or the Kasa app. So I opened the Kasa iOS app and discovered that hey, there's a firmware update. Maybe that will address my problem, since none of the 7 others on the same network had an issue. About halfway through the process something went wrong (not sure what, it didn't give a descriptive message) and I noticed that now half of my devices were showing as offline. The other half aren't just all happy though: they periodically disconnect and show up offline too.
Let's explain what I've done with one of the defunct ones in detail:
1. Delete the defunct entry from Kasa
2. Hold down the power button for 10s to factory reset. Wait until it starts rapidly blinking amber
3. Go through the set up process again when the device is alternating blue/amber.
4. Click the + button to add a new device in the Kasa app
5. Follow the directions. When instructed, switch to the TP-Link wifi network
6. Sometimes at this stage, the phone doesn't connect to the TP-Link network even after waiting several minutes. When this happens, I start back at step 1. Yes, I've tried "forgetting" the network as well as turning on/off my wifi.
7. Assuming I connected to the TP-Link network, upon returning to the app it automatically starts trying to configure the device, a good sign.
8. Almost always at this stage, it takes forever and then I just get an error message saying "Make sure you're connected to ", which I am and have verified by bringing up my wifi settings page on the iPhone. Return to step 1 if this happens.
9. If I am lucky and somehow get passed this part, what I'll see is that a random time later (yes, random, it's sometimes very short, sometimes a few minutes, sometimes longer) if I just leave the Kasa app open, I'll see the newly added device periodically going gray, i.e. offline. It then periodically comes back. It keeps doing this until I get frustrated and go back to step 1. When it's gone gray, the device is in the rapidly blinking blue light state.
That's just for the totally broken devices. Of the ones that seemed to be OK, they also will periodically just go offline and then come back. So the entire system is now completely unreliable. I have no idea how else to truly reset the device beyond unplugging it as well as holding down for 10s to factory reset it.
Before I attempted to update the firmware, I never had any issues with the devices periodically disconnecting. As stated, the only issue I had was one of my 8 devices would periodically flash blue and try to reconnect, waking me up at night so hence I tried the firmware update. I think my devices were at like 1.0.6 or something (it was definitely 1.0.single digit) and the most recent firmware is something like 1.2.something.
Yes,I've tried "turning it off and on again" with my router. Again, everything was fine the instant before the update, and the instant after it all went haywire. Well I guess the oddball bedroom lamp before hand had some issues, but it certainly has worse ones now.
Hardware Version :
Firmware Version :
ISP :
I have 8 smart plug minis. One of them, the right bedroom lamp, would often times start blinking the blue LED, conveniently in the middle of the night, waking me up. The rest were all fine. Had 0 issues using either Alexa or the Kasa app. So I opened the Kasa iOS app and discovered that hey, there's a firmware update. Maybe that will address my problem, since none of the 7 others on the same network had an issue. About halfway through the process something went wrong (not sure what, it didn't give a descriptive message) and I noticed that now half of my devices were showing as offline. The other half aren't just all happy though: they periodically disconnect and show up offline too.
Let's explain what I've done with one of the defunct ones in detail:
1. Delete the defunct entry from Kasa
2. Hold down the power button for 10s to factory reset. Wait until it starts rapidly blinking amber
3. Go through the set up process again when the device is alternating blue/amber.
4. Click the + button to add a new device in the Kasa app
5. Follow the directions. When instructed, switch to the TP-Link wifi network
6. Sometimes at this stage, the phone doesn't connect to the TP-Link network even after waiting several minutes. When this happens, I start back at step 1. Yes, I've tried "forgetting" the network as well as turning on/off my wifi.
7. Assuming I connected to the TP-Link network, upon returning to the app it automatically starts trying to configure the device, a good sign.
8. Almost always at this stage, it takes forever and then I just get an error message saying "Make sure you're connected to ", which I am and have verified by bringing up my wifi settings page on the iPhone. Return to step 1 if this happens.
9. If I am lucky and somehow get passed this part, what I'll see is that a random time later (yes, random, it's sometimes very short, sometimes a few minutes, sometimes longer) if I just leave the Kasa app open, I'll see the newly added device periodically going gray, i.e. offline. It then periodically comes back. It keeps doing this until I get frustrated and go back to step 1. When it's gone gray, the device is in the rapidly blinking blue light state.
That's just for the totally broken devices. Of the ones that seemed to be OK, they also will periodically just go offline and then come back. So the entire system is now completely unreliable. I have no idea how else to truly reset the device beyond unplugging it as well as holding down for 10s to factory reset it.
Before I attempted to update the firmware, I never had any issues with the devices periodically disconnecting. As stated, the only issue I had was one of my 8 devices would periodically flash blue and try to reconnect, waking me up at night so hence I tried the firmware update. I think my devices were at like 1.0.6 or something (it was definitely 1.0.single digit) and the most recent firmware is something like 1.2.something.
Yes,I've tried "turning it off and on again" with my router. Again, everything was fine the instant before the update, and the instant after it all went haywire. Well I guess the oddball bedroom lamp before hand had some issues, but it certainly has worse ones now.
