ESPHome devices lose their connection

mspinolo · November 24, 2020, 7:25am

Hi,

I confirm mDNS traffic leads to a lot of issues on esp32/8266 and ESPHOME.
I am not sure if it has anything to do with ESPHOME or is ESPs themselves but my shellies (esp8266 based, stock firmware) are much more solid)

On ESPHOME behavior is consistent and happening more often on devices with lower signal quality.

I am not a network expert but I suspect it has something to do with the poor wifi bandwidth ESPs have which makes them dropping connection.
Also ESPHOME devices act as servers and if you perform a wire shark log you will see they broadcast packets which by my (poor) understanding is not ideal.

Laurenthu · November 24, 2020, 9:29am

Hello Everyone!

I seem to have the same issue that you are all describing here, and it seems to be affecting my whole 2.4 GHz Wifi stability. I have around 20 ESPHome devices there - mix of ESP32 (4 of them Wired), Shellys and Sonoff devices + BlitzWolf and Avatto plugs - and depending on their Wifi connection quality they can disconnect from once a day to few times an hour.
I read a few workarounds here, like turn off ESPHome in HA when you don’t use it - but I suppose HA can’t communicate with the devices then right? Is fixing the IP solving the disconnection issues as well?

mspinolo · November 24, 2020, 9:44am

No it does not fix anything having fixed IP: it is just speeding up the re-connection after disconnects as esp doesn’t need to negotiate IP address with DHCP server

nickrout · November 24, 2020, 9:44am

You don’t need esphome running for an esphome device communicate with home assistant.

SimonPth · November 25, 2020, 10:12pm

For what it’s worth, I was having issues with ESPHome devices disconnecting all the time, but since upgrading from my RPi 3B+ running HA over wifi to a bottom of the range NUC over wired LAN, I have had none of those issues at all after a week.

glenn20 · January 27, 2021, 5:41am

Just one more datapoint - blocking my mdns reflector resolved this issue for me. This issue has plagued me for months and months. My esphome sensors going unavailable every few minutes for a few seconds to a minute. I tried the proposed fix to change my wifi AP channel width from 40MHz to 20MHz. This helped initially, but the problem returned. I realised that any restart on the AP interface resolved the issue for 30 seconds up to 10 minutes.

After reading the suggestions here, I removed my IoT subnet from the domains list of my mdns reflector (avahi-daemon). This has completely resolved the issue for me. Ie, removing (or significantly reducing) mdns traffic from the wifi network (ssid) of the esphome devices.

schoki · February 6, 2021, 8:19am

For me reducing the log level to“INFO“ was the solution, now the WiFi connection is stable.

aureliosaraiva · April 5, 2021, 12:06pm

I have the same problem.

My devices are connected to wifi normally, however they show as offline only on HomeAssistant.

I am in the latest version of the firmware.

INFO Reading configuration /config/lab.yaml...
INFO Detected timezone 'TZ' with UTC offset -3
INFO Starting log output from lab.local using esphome API
INFO Connecting to lab.local:6053 (xxx)
INFO Successfully connected to lab.local
[12:03:25][I][app:105]: ESPHome version 1.16.2 compiled on Apr  2 2021, 15:52:20

nickrout · April 5, 2021, 9:55pm

Yaml? Full log?

aureliosaraiva · April 14, 2021, 12:49pm

@nickrout

INFO Connecting to switch_bedside_01.local:6053 (192.168.68.102)
INFO Successfully connected to switch_bedside_01.local
[12:24:23][I][app:105]: ESPHome version 1.16.2 compiled on Apr 14 2021, 12:22:45
[12:24:23][C][wifi:443]: WiFi:
[12:24:23][C][wifi:303]:   SSID: [redacted]
[12:24:23][C][wifi:304]:   IP Address: x.x.x.x
[12:24:23][C][wifi:306]:   BSSID: [redacted]
[12:24:23][C][wifi:307]:   Hostname: 'switch_bedside_01'
[12:24:23][C][wifi:311]:   Signal strength: -63 dB ▂▄▆█
[12:24:23][C][wifi:315]:   Channel: 9
[12:24:23][C][wifi:316]:   Subnet: x.x.x.x
[12:24:23][C][wifi:317]:   Gateway: x.x.x.x
[12:24:23][C][wifi:318]:   DNS1: x.x.x.x
[12:24:23][C][wifi:319]:   DNS2: x.x.x.x
[12:24:23][C][uart_esp8266:075]: UART Bus:
[12:24:23][C][uart_esp8266:080]:   RX Pin: GPIO3
[12:24:23][C][uart_esp8266:081]:   RX Buffer Size: 256
[12:24:23][C][uart_esp8266:083]:   Baud Rate: 4800 baud
[12:24:23][C][uart_esp8266:084]:   Data Bits: 8
[12:24:23][C][uart_esp8266:085]:   Parity: NONE
[12:24:23][C][uart_esp8266:086]:   Stop bits: 1
[12:24:23][C][uart_esp8266:088]:   Using hardware serial interface.
[12:24:23][C][gpio.binary_sensor:015]: GPIO Binary Sensor 'switch_bedside_01 touch top'
[12:24:23][C][gpio.binary_sensor:016]:   Pin: GPIO0 (Mode: INPUT_PULLUP, INVERTED)
[12:24:23][C][gpio.binary_sensor:015]: GPIO Binary Sensor 'switch_bedside_01 touch center'
[12:24:23][C][gpio.binary_sensor:016]:   Pin: GPIO9 (Mode: INPUT_PULLUP, INVERTED)
[12:24:23][C][gpio.binary_sensor:015]: GPIO Binary Sensor 'switch_bedside_01 touch bottom'
[12:24:23][C][gpio.binary_sensor:016]:   Pin: GPIO10 (Mode: INPUT_PULLUP, INVERTED)
[12:24:23][C][switch.gpio:042]: GPIO Switch 'switch_bedside_01 button 1'
[12:24:23][C][switch.gpio:043]:   Pin: GPIO12 (Mode: OUTPUT)
[12:24:23][C][switch.gpio:059]:   Restore Mode: Restore (Defaults to OFF)
[12:24:23][C][esp8266_pwm:022]: ESP8266 PWM:
[12:24:23][C][esp8266_pwm:023]:   Pin: GPIO13 (Mode: OUTPUT)
[12:24:23][C][esp8266_pwm:024]:   Frequency: 1000.0 Hz
[12:24:23][C][esp8266_pwm:025]:   Inverted: YES
[12:24:23][C][logger:185]: Logger:
[12:24:23][C][logger:186]:   Level: DEBUG
[12:24:23][C][logger:187]:   Log Baud Rate: 0
[12:24:23][C][logger:188]:   Hardware UART: UART0
[12:24:23][C][light:178]: Light 'switch_bedside_01 LED'
[12:24:23][C][light:180]:   Default Transition Length: 1.0s
[12:24:23][C][light:181]:   Gamma Correct: 2.80
[12:24:23][C][status:034]: Status Binary Sensor 'switch_bedside_01 Status'
[12:24:23][C][status:034]:   Device Class: 'connectivity'
[12:24:23][C][captive_portal:169]: Captive Portal:
[12:24:23][C][ota:029]: Over-The-Air Updates:
[12:24:23][C][ota:030]:   Address: switch_bedside_01.local:8266
[12:24:23][C][ota:032]:   Using Password.
[12:24:23][C][api:095]: API Server:
[12:24:23][C][api:096]:   Address: switch_bedside_01.local:6053
[12:29:07][I][ota:046]: Boot seems successful, resetting boot loop counter.

substitutions:
  hostname: "switch_bedside_01"
  ssid_ap: "switch_bedside_01"
  versao: "1.0"

esphome:
  name: switch_bedside_01
  platform: ESP8266
  board: esp01_1m
  board_flash_mode: dout
  esp8266_restore_from_flash: false

wifi:
  ssid: !secret wifi_ssid
  password: !secret wifi_pass
  ap:
    ssid: "$ssid_ap"
    password: !secret AP_mode_pass

captive_portal:

logger:
  baud_rate: 0
# Enable Home Assistant API//
api:

ota:
  password: !secret ota_pass

uart:
  rx_pin: RX
  baud_rate: 4800

binary_sensor:
  - platform: gpio
    pin:
      number: GPIO0
      mode: INPUT_PULLUP
      inverted: True
    name: "$hostname touch top"
    id: button_1
  - platform: gpio
    pin:
      number: GPIO9
      mode: INPUT_PULLUP
      inverted: True
    name: "$hostname touch center"
    id: button_2
  - platform: gpio
    pin:
      number: GPIO10
      mode: INPUT_PULLUP
      inverted: True
    name: "$hostname touch bottom"
    id: button_3
  - platform: status
    name: "$hostname Status"

switch:
  - platform: gpio
    name: "$hostname button 1"
    pin: GPIO12

output:
  # Register the blue LED as a dimmable output ....
  - platform: esp8266_pwm
    id: blue_led
    pin: GPIO13
    inverted: True

light:
  # ... and then make a light out of it.
  - platform: monochromatic
    name: "$hostname LED"
    output: blue_led

godsfshrmn · April 14, 2021, 2:50pm

I wanted to add I am having the same issue. I don’t think it is a WiFi issue as I’m using an Olimex board that is PoE- the wifi on this is not configured and it is solely ethernet. I don’t see it drop off of my UDM. It doesnt seem like a connectivity issue in that regard

nickrout · April 14, 2021, 9:36pm

I am away from home and only reading this on my phone. However I don’t see any disconnections. Where are you seeing that the device is unavailable?

aureliosaraiva · April 15, 2021, 12:27am

In the HomeAssistant

elaiel · May 18, 2021, 6:52am

It seems I have the same issue as mentioned above. My devices (NodeMCUs and Wemos D1) worked fine, until I upgraded home-assistant to version 2021.04.x (I’m not sure about the version, as I did not recognize this as an issue first). All devices are available in ESPHome (v1.19.0) and working as they should - no connections lost, no error messages, sensor data gets send out.
If I integrate the devices into home-assistant (esphome integration with auto discovery), the devices are detected and the sensor data is available.
Until I restart homeassistant, then the devices are unavailable. It shows up as integration and I have to delete the device, and then add it again, every time I restart home-assistant.
My work around for some devices: enable MQTT, this seems to work even when the device is shown as unavailable in home-assistant, so I get at least the data. But I cannot use MQTT for all my devices (tag reader).
What I’m struggeling with is, that it works when adding the device to home-assistant, but not after the restart. I use fixed IPs for each device. I cannot find any error messages in the log files (in home-assistant).

dadav · June 2, 2021, 7:38am

I recently had the same problem. My esp8266 mini would randomly switch to “not available” and then back to normal.The solution was to remove the fallback hotspot from my configuration… …

duceduc · June 13, 2021, 8:41pm

The solution was to remove the fallback hotspot from my configuration

Do you mean to remove this line?

captive_portal:

erger · July 29, 2021, 10:58am

Hello guys,

i have the same problem. What does it mean to remove the fallback hotspot?

erger · July 29, 2021, 11:07am

Solved - i simply had to reload the esphome integration in the lovelace.

solomos · January 25, 2022, 10:17am

I am having the same behavior. It loses connection to the HA and can’t reconnect.
Have you find any solution?

orange-assistant · January 25, 2022, 11:29am

Do you have any logs?