I have some BroadLink SP4M-US smart plugs which are each logging the following error message around every 15 minutes:
2021-01-15 08:29:31 ERROR (MainThread) [homeassistant.components.broadlink.updater] Error fetching Study Lamp (SP4M-US at 192.168.xx.xxx) data: [Errno -4000] Network timeout
I’ve also noticed that these devices also flash the blue light on the button every so often, presumably around the same time as the error is logged.
I am theorizing that they’re resetting themselves because I’ve blocked their internet access in my router, and they’re trying to “phone home” to BroadLink.
I have no interest in posting my home’s status to some third party cloud, so allowing them internet access is not an option. I bought a bunch of these after the first one I tried seemed to work very well locally, without internet access. It wasn’t until I started looking at the logs that I noticed this pattern. Since I’m running HA off an SD card, I’d like to minimize log writes.
For the record, the log errors in the OP are no longer happening (at least, not often enough to notice.) But the ticket you added in Github correctly identifies the issue with these devices building their own isolated subnet. It would be great to find a solution, but my hopes aren’t high. Vendors don’t seem to like local control.
There is a really really dirty hack. Connect each plug to a separate email address. I have my email connected to a domain with a wild card so creating sp4mus01@ through sp4mus08@ isn’t a big deal but for others, it might not be an ideal solution.
That’s been discussed elsewhere but I forgot to go back and update this thread. Thank you for doing that for me!
Another tip if you don’t have your own domain is to just use one GMail account, and add a period in different places. Turns out My.Address at gmail dot com is the same as MyAdd.ress at gmail dot com, but you can set up two different Broadlink accounts using those two “different” addresses. I have four of them going now. Works fine, since I’ll never be buying another Broadlink device, and I never log on with them anyway.