ESP8266 with ESPHome keeps losing connection to HA

ESPHome
21

Nope. I’m afread it has to be your first born.

22

I have found forcing WIFI G is the only way my ESPHome stay on my asus mesh network.

Have your esphome for esp8266 devices section look like this

esphome:
  name: XXXX
  friendly_name: XXXX
  on_boot:
    priority: 300
    then:
      lambda: |-
        WiFi.setPhyMode(WIFI_PHY_MODE_11G);

thank me later!

23

Salesdroids in the shops certainly give the impression wi-fi is magic - that wi-fi “just works”; that the signals stop at the border of our property (because we don’t see neighbours devices on our network even if they’re using the same channel); that we should keep adding wi-fi devices as though there’s no limit; etc, etc.

Unfortunately the signals are invisible to our eyes which leaves us mostly guessing.

24

Thank you so much for all the feedback and tips. I found the cause. My router had assigned a new IP address to the ESP8266 via DHCP. However, when I checked with ‘Device Pulse,’ it was still showing the old one. I then set the old address as a static IP on the ESP and in my router, and everything has been working properly ever since—no more connection drops. I’m happy.

25

So it was the FRITZ!Box that was on the fritz :wink:

26

Actually no. The FritzBox is most likely working quite well, being widely deployed and well supported by the vendor. It is now probably allocating a static IP address so that DHCP was not required that put the ESP8266 at the same IP Address after a reboot, making the mDNS process superfluous.
The underlying issue with signal strength has probably not been remedied, just made a little less obvious.
The watchdog timers are probably still kicking in, and the reboots are now happening silently, unobtrusively, with minimal data loss.

28 
esphome:
  name: XXXX
  friendly_name: XXXX
  on_boot:
    priority: 300
    then:
      lambda: |-
        WiFi.setPhyMode(WIFI_PHY_MODE_11G);

Tried this, no improvements at all.