Kasa KL400 light strips become unavailable when trying to set color

1

I installed a bunch of Kasa switches, plugs and light strips about 4 weeks ago. Up until a few days ago, I was integrating them into Homekit via Homebridge. Earlier this week I made the decision to migrate to HA. Everything has gone fairly smoothly except for the two light strips. They actually work fine to just turn them on/off (from HA or HK or Kasa app). But they’ve been intermittently going offline (unavailable). I finally figured out that it’s happening whenever I try to change the color. This started immediately after integrating them into HA. Doesn’t matter whether I change the color in HA or HK or Kasa, they will become unavailable in HA within ~30 seconds. They remain unavailable for ~60-90 seconds and then come back online. Didn’t have any problems with them when I was using Homebridge.

I’m running HA in Hyper-V on a mini PC, Win11 Pro. I’m using the TPLink and Homekit integrations to bridge the Kasa devices to Homekit. When I switched from Homebridge to HA, I followed this process:

  • Removed HB bridge from HK
  • Disabled and uninstalled HB on Mac
  • Installed TPLink integration in HA and let it discover all devices
  • Installed Homekit integration in HA and configured to expose all Kasa devices
  • Added HA bridge in HK and configured all Kasa devices in HK
  • Started testing various devices in HK and immediately noticed issues with the KL400 light strips (I didn’t realize it at the time, but looking back, they would lose connection every time I tried adjusting the color)
  • As a troubleshooting step, factory reset both light strips to remove them from the Kasa app, then re-added them (didn’t seem to help)

To recap: The KL400 light strips worked perfectly for the past few weeks using HB. Since integrating them in HA, they become unavailable for a period of time every time I try to adjust the color.

I turned on debug logging for the TPLink integration, but I’m not seeing anything very useful in the logbook. It just shows that the color was changed and then a few seconds later it shows they became unavailable.

I don’t think this is a networking issue. I have strong Wifi throughout the house, but certainly in the kitchen where the light strips are. I did assign an IP reservation for each, but it hasn’t made any difference. It seems like the TPLink integration is the likely culprit, but I can’t really tell what might be going on. I’m very new to HA, so maybe there’s a different level of logging I should try?

Any help or suggestions would be appreciated. Thanks.

2

I have the same happening to me, but this even happens when i try to change the color in the Kasa app, so i’m not sure it’s HA, just KASA in general.
I also have a KL420 and with that one i have no issues at all

3

It’s not Kasa. It does happen when changing the color anywhere (including in the Kasa app), but it only happens when the light strips are enabled in the HA TP-Link integration. As soon as I disable them in the integration, I can change colors with no problems. Certainly seems like an issue with the integration.

My work-around is to bring those light strips into SmartThings first, then use the HA SmartThings integration to pull the light strips into HA. Doing it that way, I don’t have any problems. It stinks to have to add another layer between the light strips and Homekit (my endpoint) that could fail, but it’s what I’m trying for now.

4

Not sure if it fixed anything for me for sure, but i rebooted my router and then HA.
After that i can use HA to change to color on the strips and they are not becoming unavailable anymore.

Just had a test with 2 out of 3 strips and they all just seem to work now???