Hi everyone - I’m keeping an eye on this thread, but right now the issue seems to be with TP-Link (per @DevOpsTodd in-depth analysis earlier in this thread). We’ll continue to monitor this thread and follow-up with any updates.
The Classic UI gives me a little more info - it looks like some of the disconnects are followed by reconnects on the same channel and AP. A few are roaming between APs. Hmmm.
@kevin1 what you’re showing is actually very common with UniFi APs and its normally an issue when you have a controller where the inform url for the info response (on the AP) is not correct or set to a FQDN instead of an IP. This happens a lot when people use phones to setup the APs to controllers. It’s normally more of an annoyance than a problem.
The only true way to tell if there’s an actual disconnect would be to do a continuous ping to the device and see if you get loss.
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Okay, so I finally received a response back from TP-Link and basically they are saying they don’t know how Sense works and that they are seeing the behavior with the HS300 as well. Although, originally I didn’t see any issues with the HS300, I do when I look back at the data now. It does appear to be less frequent however.
Interestingly for me, I have never performed a power pull on my KP115s and starting on Monday of this week all of them appear to be reporting with much better accuracy. There’s still an occasional spike and drop, but the frequency of the drop outs and the n/a no longer appear.
The TP-Link people are curious about the other devices on the network and asked me to isolate the plugs and the sense on their own VLAN to see if the other devices, specifically the Google devices are causing issues. For those who follow the thread, my google home hubs all bricked at the same time a couple weeks back and have since been removed from the network. Google tech support is still looking into why after 2 weeks. Also interesting is that I reported way back when, in this thread, that my Google devices were talking to the Kasa devices, which I never had them programmed to do so. So that is interesting. On Monday of this week, when things starting working normally again I made a couple changes to my environment.
- I removed all Google nest cameras (x6) and and Nest Hellos (x2) from my network and replaced them with Axis cameras and an AI based NVR that allows me to perform deep video analytics.
- I added 2 x Nanostation 5ACs
- I switched one of my Cisco AP’s from repeater to AP (Cisco language for back-haul to hardwired)
I would like to get a poll going based on what other devices people have on their network in order to see if there’s any correlation with interference caused by other devices and the Kasa devices.
PLEASE ONLY RESPOND TO THIS POLL IF YOU HAVE ISSUES WITH KASA DEVICES!!!
- I have a WiFi Mesh with all access points connected via ethernet cables
- I have a WiFi mesh with some access points in repeater or back-haul configuration
- I have Google home devices on my network (hubs & mini’s)
- I have Google Nest cameras or doorbells (hello) on my network
- I have Ubiquiti networking products on my network
- I have Amazon Alexa devices on my network (Shows or Dots)
- I am running Home Assistant
- I have a Smarthings Hub
- I have a Phillips Hue Hub
- I have a Hubitat Hub
- My Kasa devices connect to my router’s WiFi (DO NOT CHECK if you’re connected to aftermarket WiFi Access Points)
- My Kasa devices and Sense are connected to a VLAN other than the native (If you don’t know what this is don’t check it)
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I know we can discuss all day who’s at fault here but even if this is a strictly Kasa issue, why doesn’t Sense use the Kasa cloud API instead of this obviously wonky local communication? That seems to ALWAYS work (at least in my case).
I think there’s a number of reasons for this:
- Sense is already using about 1gb of bandwidth a day on my network. Polling would only increase this assuming the monitor is doing the work.
- WAN outages are more frequent than LAN outages if we are talking about a stream of data that needs to be semi reliable
- Possible polling limits (I haven’t researched it on Kasa’s end)
- Privacy / Security
- Probably the biggest of them all … It would be best if this was done server side and not on the monitor. Without knowing how Sense servers are setup I’m not sure of their capabilities.
I think that in time Sense is going to have to figure out a better way to deal with third party energy monitors. My Samsung smart home kitchen appliances now have energy monitoring (as of last weeks update) in the ST ecosystem. All of these integrations are things that Sense should be working on solving IMO.
So while I agree with you that there should be a better way. I think it’s gonna be a lot of work on their end. They even said in one post that monitoring the Kasa plugs via local discovery is easy…
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Your Sense using a Gig of Bandwidth a day is seriously more than mine with 36 down and 117 up.
In fact in a week I was only 1.3 down and 1.1 up
Your percentage of upload to download looks nothing like mine for the day or week.
Are you meshed or hardwired?
@Beachcomber not to get too technical but I have a wired mesh network. Mesh can be wired or wireless. But I think what you are asking me is if I have wireless mesh repeaters. I do not. They are all wired. Also the bandwidth I’m showing is network bandwidth not necessarily WAN bandwidth to/from the monitor. I have traffic analysis disabled on my network, because I believe in the privacy of my family, and frankly don’t want to know where they go on the internet, so therefore I couldn’t give you a number for WAN usage.
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I have mesh but all APs wired as well.
Yes, I was wondering if wired or repeater, wondering if that would account for doubling (or tripling) your data to get you to a Gig of data a day to the Sense unit.
But that’s clearly not the case.
FWIW, my Sense is at ~1.58GB per day down, and ~350MB up.
Here’s the latest response from TP-Link just a few minutes ago. They are asking me to remove all of the Google devices from my network (vlan) and continue testing. I will do that and report back. Based on the poll I don’t think that Google alone is to blame here but if the TP-Link devices are communicating with other devices on the network it could be that they have some internal rate limiting and Sense is just getting the short end of the stick sometimes. This wouldn’t explain @Offthewall problem very well, but it appears based on the feedback I’m getting from TP-Link that this might be partially to blame.
I’ll be interested to hear the result of the isolation test. My plugs are partially isolated in a devices (washer/dryer, sense, plugs etc.) network. No Google devices in the net at all.
On Monday of last week, as I mentioned here:
And as a refresher I said this here:
I have removed all of my Google/Nest products from the house (if anyone wants 2 Nest Hello’s, 4 IQ Outdoor Cams, 2 Regular Outdoor Cams, 1 Indoor IQ, 2 Hub Maxes, 2 Homes, 3 Thermostats, or 6 brand new Home Hubs let me know 
) and I think the change is obvious by the screenshot below. I’ve been over a week now with no n/a’s and no drops in data.
I honestly don’t think Google is to blame, but I really don’t know. I have never had issues with any other products and I’m not sure how many other products will conflict with these plugs. I’m not throwing the towel in on this and I will continue to try and help @Offthewall and others. There’s a new poll to see if we can isolate the issues I’m experiencing vs @Offthewall.
- My Kasa plugs go offline every 4-5 days and require a power pull to reset.
- My Kasa plugs show sporatic data like the screenshot above (spikes and drops)
- My Kasa plugs don’t have any issues
- I don’t have Kasa plugs, but I want to participate!
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Two more of my HS110s have gone “zombie” today. Symptoms:
- They go n/a in Sense
- They are visible in Kasa app, but when I ask for Energy, I get the spinning circle forever.
- I get no response when pinging both of them from my laptop that is wired to a LAN port on my router (Unbiquiti UDM)
- But they both respond to pings initiated from that same UDM (I’m ssh’ed into the UDM)
- Both appear connected correctly to WiFi (green WiFi symbol constantly illuminated)
- Power cycling HS110s do not fix
This is all with a single LAN / subnet, no VLANs. Trying to make everything as simple as possible. And no Google hardware on network.
Funny you should bring this up
Look at my Dell Ethernet switch that just started going off/on according to Sense/KASA this afternoon.
Kp115
It’s never turned off in actuality.
Furthermore, I started receiving these False Alerts once a day on various Devices.
Was there anything you could correlate in packet captures?
The only thing that I could see when they were attached was that the devices were communicating with the Google devices. At that time I didn’t really dig into why because I didn’t suspect it to be the issue. Now, when I look at the pcaps everything appears to be normal. The Kasa devices respond when they receive the boradcast.
Previously the Kasa devices only responded sometimes to the Sense broadcast. This is why I believe that it’s possible that the Kasa devices have an internal rate limiting. Is it possible that the Google devices just got the lion share of the rate limit, could be… I don’t know because I can’t tell you that part of the story from the pcaps. Could these plugs be susceptible to other vendors and the same issue, possibly.
All I can definitively say at this point is: removing the Google devices made them work correctly. I still have perfect reporting from all of my Kasa devices for 10 days now. This leads me to believe that there’s compatibility issues with the plugs (and other IOT devices) and not network issues (at least for the sporadic data issue).
Based on the polling it appears the complete offline issue that @Offthewall has is isolated to him or just a single voter if it wasn’t him.
Good to know, thanks. Btw, did you leave your Hubitat Kasa integration enabled, or did you disable that as well?