When HA is started - some devices on network crash/become unresponsive

Hardware
1

Hi there everyone! :slight_smile:

I am new to HA and am having an issue that I cannot seem to fix (quite a few weeks in at this point) and thought its time to ask for help.

In short what is happening is, I have a few devices such as multiple Tapo Wireless (C100 & C200) cameras, and a TP-Link Wi-Fi extender. And every time I plug in/start my HA server - these devices become unresponsive (and at the same time) and stop working. The cameras disconnect from the network and the extender the same (connected without internet) and the second I stop/unplug my HA - the devices come back online immediately and return to normal.

This is my current setup:

  • PI 5 connected this to an Ethernet cable (Static IP outside of the range on my router)
  • Both cameras also have static IPs outside of the range set on the router.
  • TP-Link EX511 Router (At most, 15 devices are connected at all times)
  • HA Core Version 2025.2.5 (OS 14.2)

I have tried the following:

  • Set static IPs on all of my devices
  • Ran HA in wired (on different ports) and wireless mode
  • Re-installed HA multiple times
  • I have removed the default config and added only the ones I needed one by one.
  • I have reserved the static IPs on the router (please note I am not very network technical - so not sure if there are other router setting I need to change to help fix this issue)

Before I continue to pull all my hair out - I thought I would post this topic, just incase someone else has had the same issue and can provide some help. :joy:

Thank you!

2

What do you mean by this statement? What IP addresses are you using? What happens if you allow dynamic IP’s on all devices?

3

Check and note down the IP of your Pi, the cameras and this extender. Sounds like you possibly have a conflicting IP on this extender, are the devices that stops responding connected to this extender?

4

Apologies - let me give some more info here :slight_smile:

I set the IP address pool between 2 and 199. (For example: 192.100.0.2 - 192.100.0.199)

I then set the Pi running HA to 192.100.0.250 and the cameras to 192.100.0.200 and 201.

Not sure if I maybe made matters worse by doing this - but when I set everything to dynamic, I get the same behavior. All devices “shut down”.

5

They are all connected to the main modem I have. The extender is simply there as I have a dead spot in one area of my home. If I unplug this extender - the same behavior happens. :slight_smile:

And all IPs appear different on my router to what I set them statically

6

This is really messed up.

The symptoms you describe are an indication of an IP address conflict. The first thing I would do is to remove the extender. I’ve never seen one work well and it could be contributing to the IP conflict. You would be MUCH better served with a Wireless Access Point.

Download the free Advanced IP Scanner.

Use DHCP unless a reserved or static IP is really necessary.
Reserved IP is defined in the router; linked to the client device MAC address.
Static IP is defined in the client device, usually at compile time. Static IP should be used rarely.

I have over 110 network clients, and only two have static IP addresses. These are ESP devices that sleep most of the time and by using static IP addresses they connect to the router faster when they wake up. It’s only a few milliseconds, but over a month or year, that is battery consumption saved.

About 15-20 of the remaining devices have a reserved IP in the router. These are things that will connect by IP, like cameras, and the IP needs to be unchanging.

Everything else is free-range DHCP.

Static IP used indiscriminately causes more problems that it fixes. Turn them all off. Run everything DHCP. Make your DHCP pool as large as you can. In my case everything between x.x.x.2 and x.x.x.220 is DHCP. (Oh, yes, my router has a static IP at 192.168.1.1). Use the advanced IP scanner to see what changes. (You can click on file, export to save the results of the scan. Then make a change and do another scan).

The terms “static IP” and “fixed IP” are often used interchangeably, but the ISO standard refers to “static”.

7

Can you paste the IPs that the devices are reporting and what IPs you see in the router?

8

@fleskefjes and @stevemann:

Sorry, I think I mis-explained this. I meant to say that the static IPs I set on the devices (The PI and the cameras) are being set correctly. So on the router, I can see the cameras are 200 and 201 respectively and the pi is set to 250.

When I am home tomorrow - I will take screenshots (as they appear in the router) and try to put them back to dynamic to test :slight_smile:

Thanks again! Will keep you updated.

9

One question people are not asking or stating about static IP’s they are to be set only for server and non changing devices like camera’s that need that IP to stay the same and should never be done on the device side but always on the DHCP server (router) side.

I have my DHCP set to the full .1 - 254 range and just allocate blocks for servers 200-254, cameras 50-60 and my desktop devices 100-199; everything else that is wireless is left as dynamic.

1 Like
10

Thanks! I have actually set the IPs (static ones on the camera and pi) on the device itself. I will change it on the router side instead as you suggest and see what it does then. Hopefully, this is the issue! :slight_smile:

Thank you so much!

11

After a couple of weeks of struggling, I have figured it out! It had nothing to do with my network or the HAOS setup - but instead USB 3.0 Interference. I never knew this was a thing until I stumbled onto a forum on Reddit where others have had similar issues.

I simply plugged my SSD into the 2.0 port and moved the Pi and SSD further away from the router and that has fixed all my problems! I am happy to say its been a full week without any issues!!

Thanks again to everyone for the help! Appreciate it a lot! :grinning: