Changing Home WiFi Password

Configuration
1

I’m trying to determine the best way to handle changing my WiFi password. I currently have 60+ devices from a variety of flavors (ESP8266, Lutron, Wink, Hues, Shelly, Sonoff (Tasmotized and not) ESPHome, RaspPis, etc. etc. etc… Some have fallback APs, some don’t. If I change my home WiFi and these devices drop off the WiFi due to the password change, how can I access them to update to the new password? The last thing I want to do is have to perform factory resets or delete and re-add the devices, as some like the Shellys are not readily accessible. In addition, if the device is reset/recreated, there is a strong possibility that the entity or device name will change/be rediscovered in HA, leading to a plethora of broken scripts, automations, etc. Obviously, devices like smart TVs, game consoles, etc. are not a problem because they have a local display interface to update the password. But for devices that are only accessible via WiFi, what is the best way to handle changing the WiFi password (and/or the SSID)? The semi-good news is that nearly all my devices are assigned static IP addresses and I have also recorded all MAC addresses… if that’s helpful. And my HA server is on a wired connection, so no changes have to be made for the HA or MQTT server connections.

I’ve come up with two possible routes…

  1. First move all the devices, one by one, to a secondary guest network (different SSID). This will require all sorts of script updates and reflashing (but hopefully OTA in most cases like Tasmota, WLED and ESPHome). Each device will temporary drop off the current Wifi upon reboot, but should (hopefully) still be accessible via the guest WiFi. Once all devices are moved to the guest wifi then change the original SSID password and move each device back again (once again reflashing/rebooting).

  2. On the current WiFi (still old password), access each device and change the password to a new password (again, reflashing where needed). Each will drop off the Wifi and will temporarily be unreachable via normal WiFi. Once that is done, the WiFi password can be changed, each device rebooted and “hope” that everything comes back online. This has the advantage of only updating/reflashing devices once, but runs the risk of leaving a device inaccessible if it doesn’t come back online, requiring a potential factory reset, reflash, changing entity name in HA, etc.

So, are there other options here? Again, I don’t need to worry about HA itself since it is on a wire connection. It is just the best way to approach a WiFi password/SSID change with a large number of various edge devices without a method of accessing other than WiFi and without breaking all the scripts, automations, etc. in HA.

Any advice greatly appreciated!

2

Use the old password on the new router.

3

What new router?

Pretty sure he wants to change the password on the existing router.

I’d go with option 1. Less change of losing a device.

4

@tom_l Yes, you are correct. Same router and network equipment. This is just a normal security routine where I use to change the WiFi password twice a year at daylight savings time changes. But I’ve not done that for quite some time for exactly the reasons I listed above.

I appreciate the feedback!

5

I would go with the first option. It’s the safe route that, even though it causes more effort, allows you to fix the setup if something goes wrong. And you should expect something to go wrong. If you were to go with option 2, you may have to spend even more time switching the password back and forth until you are sure all devices have been migrated successfully.
In any case, the first step I would take is to ensure you have a gapless list of all WiFi clients that need the new password. It would be annoying forgetting about a certain device, and then having to migrate it a month later, possible causing another downtime for all the other devices.

BTW: this is a scenario where I love the ability of UniFi gear to provide multiple networks simultaneously. At least if (permanently) switching to a new SSID is an option.

6

I have recently done this. What I did was create a guest network with the new ssid and password. Move everything over. Then change the host ssid and password to the desired one. Then delete the guest. You may have to reboot the router to force everything to reconnect.
This will save having to change everything again.

Ex. Host: old_name
Create guest: new_name
Move everything
Change host: new_name
Delete guest
Reboot router