Hello, Concerning smart plugs , I recently ran into a problem that could be a problem when a person is out of town. While we were out of town the smart plugs lost wifi connection. I was able to remotely verify that my wifi and router were ok since my wifi security cameras were working ok. I expected that the smart plugs would be smart enough to try to reconnect to wifi automatically however they never did. When we got home I had to unplug and replug the smart plug and then after a few minutes the smart plug reconnected to wifi. The plugs were made by Feit Electric. I contacted Feit support but their only suggestion was to unplug and replug the smart plug but this does not help if you are out of town. The plugs were used to control lamps so the lamps were in the ON position until we got home. As a workaround I plug the smart plug into a digital timer that powers off and back on every 24 hours to reset the smart plug in case the smart plug loses wifi connection. Any thoughts on if this is a common smart plug problem?
Not sure if this would work, but we have a separate SSID for smart devices that we can turn on and off remotely, this has cured most of our issues
I’d say it’s a common problem with cheap computers/electronics in general. I remember in the early days of consumer ethernet the cheaper network switches would need a power cycle every so often. It’ll be a while until IoT stuff reaches any kind of maturity near the bottom end. A properly designed embedded system would be more robust than this.
The SSID probably isn’t the problem. It is that the devices themselves hang and need to be unplugged to reset them.
Unfortunately, the timer plug is probably the best solution you can have, other than buying reliable kit or hoping the firmware will improve.
I run Unifi kit at home. The CloudKey 2 was very unreliable for the first 6 months or so, I’d have to reset it a couple of times a month at one point, I even had to do a factory reset and repair all the switches and access points again. I was nearly at the point where I was going to throw it all away, then it got a solid update and has been stable ever since.
One thing I find with some of my smart plugs is where the socket is located, behind furniture, is not great for getting a decent WiFi connection. I have two in our guest room that will often lose connection. The sockets are behind a metal bed frame. Just moving them with a short extension cable sorted this.