I’ve got a weird problem: one day, my Home Assistant went offline, and I couldn’t figure out what was going on… until I did. Turns out the Ethernet port just stopped working. The little lights on my RP4’s port stopped blinking.
I tried everything. Reinstalled the system multiple times, but I just couldn’t get it working again. Right now, my system is running over Wi-Fi, but it’s super unstable and a real pain.
I also tried buying a USB-A to Ethernet dongle, but that didn’t work either. It does get power when I plug it into the RP4 (a little light turns on), but when I connect an Ethernet cable, nothing happens.
I can’t really run more tests because I don’t have a way to connect a monitor—I’m missing a mini HDMI adapter.
Anyone got any other ideas? I’m pretty much a newbie, but I can follow any guide you throw my way. Thanks a bunch!
Define nothing. There should be two LEDs on the adapter, usually green and yellow. One indicates data and the other indicates 100Mbps connection. Which one is on and is it blinking?
How are you connecting to the router? Direct or through a switch?
Have you tried a different Ethernet cable?
Have you tried a different port on the router or switch?
Not 100% sure how to do it, but can could try a firmware update. Think there are instructions on the pi forums.
I know they moved the network to a separate bus on the pi 5, but not sure on the pi4. I think its still on the USB bus.
Are all the usb ports working and not overloaded or anything silly?
In this case, nothing means nothing—neither of the two lights turn on in any way. Just to clarify, my RP4 was connected via Ethernet until one day, for no apparent reason, the whole system disconnected. It took me a while to realize that this was the issue, but since that day, it never worked again.
I’m connected directly to the router. The router ports are working because I have my access points connected there, and they all work fine. I tried using the cable I had and also the cables from the access points, which are known to work. And yes, I also tested different ports on the router.
Other things I tried:
Restarting the system in multiple ways.
Reinstalling everything from scratch.
Installing the RP4 OS on an SD card.
Trying to connect with a USB-to-Ethernet dongle, which didn’t work either.
You have pretty well covered all the differentials. You may be buying another host computer. I strongly recommend a micro PC like the Intel NUC. You can get them used on eBay for about what a new Raspberry Pi5 + case and PSU would cost. Mine is a NUC i3 and the uptime is measured in years. Plus any micro-PC will outperform the Raspberry in every category.
One more test you can do to verify that your hardware has failed. Flash Raspian to a new SD card and see if the Raspberry OS has Ethernet.
Yeah, pretty much. Since I got a few replies like yours, I went to the store yesterday and bought a micro HDMI adapter and an extra SD card to install Raspbian and run more tests on my RP4. No luck—nothing worked. That’s as far as I got.
I was already planning to get a mini PC at some point, both to upgrade my HA setup and add other things (like Immich and maybe more), but I wasn’t planning on spending that money right now. Oh well, that’s how it goes. I’ll stick with Wi-Fi for a few more months—even though it’s super unstable—and then I’ll start looking for the best mini PC for me.
The first thing you will notice from using a Mini PC for Home Assistant is how freakingly fast it is. On mine a full backup takes a few seconds under 5 minutes, and a restore takes about 6 or 7 minutes. Node red finishes a deploy in one or two seconds. You’ll get spoiled really quickly.
