Not sure if it is the right category, but I think it is ESPHome related.
I have about 100 smart plugs and smart relays, programmed with ESPHome. So far so good, all are working correctly. After a shutdown of the Wifi router for about 10 minutes, I got a lot devices which needed reconfiguration. It is just a click of a button, but in the mean time they are not connected/working in HA.
It is a problem I have often seen in another HA installation, and mostly after a reboot or power down of the Wifi router.
Anyone knows a solution, one way or another, maybe a workaround with an automation to âclickâ the boxes, as it is pretty annoying.
In the logs I see this, maybe it helps to find a solution:
Unexpected device found at 192.168.45.32; expected athom-smart-plug-v2-a75c6e with mac address 7c:2c:67:d7:d0:1c, found athom-smart-plug-v2-a75c6e with mac address 34:ab:95:a7:5c:6e
I donât say that this is the problem but you might assign static ip address, at lest on some of the devices that required reconfiguration. You can do it on router.
It seems to me that two devices are trying to get the same ip address and that is causing problems.
Or maybe you have enabled randomized macs
Thanks both, I was also thinking in that direction, unfortunately I donât have access to the router myself, I have to contact ICT.
But Iâm also bringing it up for the developers; we use HA to automate everything, but for this (i.m.o.) simple issue, we have to manually press Reconfigure for each node (in my case over 40).
You also have many names that look almost identical.
What kind of network and over how large of a physical space do you have that you need 100 smart devices? With a network that size you need to take extra care.
I see many people recommend static IP addresses. I think they are helpful in some cases but come with a much higher burden of really knowing what you are doing (and if you make a small mistake it can be very hard to figure out).
It is in our showroom at work, about 20x10 meters, about 100 devices, we have a mesh network of TP-Link Deco M5, all nodes are having good wifi strength (made a list of all devices with the wifi sensor). It is dedicated for this purpose, no other devices or PCâs or anything.
All working perfectly for months now, if I donât turn of the router.
A few people on here have had issues with TP-Link Deco, looks like each AP is different network segment and the MAC address and possibly IP change depending on which AP you connect to.
I know you donât have access to configure the Decos, but if itâs just used for the showrooms you can ask them to turn off fast roaming. This solved some issues with my mesh.
I checked this and indeed, the nodes are stored with host: âip-addressâ instead of hostname.
For another small issue (canât remember it exactly) I added âuse_address: ${name}.localâ, but I donât think it has any influence on the problem?
Despite many people working for decades to make networking easy, it can still be challenging to get it right.
HA tries to make things easy and frequently succeeds, but when things are a little outside the expected it can make things harder to figure out. Using names is better/easier until name resolution stops working. People frequently resort to using IP addresses and sometimes even set static ones. That can work, but there is a reason DHCP and mDNS were invented. If you mess up the config slightly, it will be really hard to figure out where that misconfigured thing is.
