Playing around with a couple Tapo Matter switches. Learning a few things and found a gotcha. Others may already know this, but just in case here is a warning(?)
I paired the switches with Homekit. Then generated a code and added to HE. All was fine. One of the switches kept dropping out and I would have to hit the restart button. So downloaded the Tapo app on my phone to see about firmware update. The app found the device, firmware up to date. So I removed it from the Tapo app. BIG MISTAKE. It also removed it from Homekit and HE. And since the barcode was on the side of the switch I had to pull it out of the wall to repair.
Yeah Kasa has done some weird confusing stuff between their multiple apps and Matter support. I had a similar issue I think with an old Kasa device that showed up in the Tapo app automatically when I installed it, I was trying to get it to work right in the app and either hid or removed it and it basically reset the thing and wiped out its Wifi connection. Had to go get the thing and join it to the Wifi again.
Also if you pair the device using the Tapo app, it connects to your Wifi but uses the Tapo API and not Matter, disabling the Matter support. So you have to reset it and add it to a Matter controller first, then let the Tapo app find it.
Kinda what I found out. The hard way. I did see that in the Kasa app you can get the barcode info from there. So really didn't have to pull the switch. In the future I am going to make sure I keep a record of the bar code so if anything happens I can recover a little easier.
