No specific functinal improvements. The number is to align with the built-in integration.
@djgutheinz - The Kasa devices don't show up in the Swap Apps Devices app - so appears they are not supported as they are child devices of the integration app? Seems obvious, but just wanted to confirm.
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Correct.
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Actually, they should be children of the Kasa Integration Application; however, there is an issue with the built-in app orphaning existing devices after the merge process. Does not impact device prime functionality. I know nothing about the swap app.
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I found this out the hard way. It seems like devices that are created by any app or integration do not show up in the swap tool. Only physical devices seem to show up there.
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Forgive me because I couldn't possibly read everything, but I was thinking of picking up the Kasa for a few spots that were simply "less important" and didn't want to buy a more expensive zigbee/zwave motion switch or a smart switch+separate motion sensor.
But then I came across this:
and am simply... confused? That almost makes it sound like the integration does nothing/can't actually receive events. So what DOES the integration do?
I am looking to get either the motion sensor switch or dimmer. It will turn on the connected light (no need for smarts here obviously) but I may also want to trigger another device/event.
The integration can control Kasa devices over the LAN, and poll then for their status over the LAN.
The devices do not automatically report changes in status.
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This will work, as long as the delay associated with polling is acceptable to your needs.
And, as @djgutheinz indicated, motion events do not appear to be exposed to the local API.
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Ah, so if I for example ALSO wanted to turn on an auxillary light source, that wouldn't realistically work because polling isn't actually going to be every second (and even that a 1s delay can be a bit weird)
So dare I ask, how exactly/what exactly are people using the kasa integration for?
I can't speak for others, but I use a few of them for energy monitoring. This is actually an area where WiFi devices, which aren't bandwidth limited, perform better than zigbee/z-wave devices, where frequent updates from multiple such devices can saturate the low bandwidth zigbee/z-wave protocols.
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I agree with aaiyar. I looked into the motion switch, but wouldn't fit the bill for my use. I was more interested in using it for the motion sensor to trigger other things but for that you need nearly realtime updates. It doesn't send it's status to hubitat, hubitat has to poll it every so often.
But I have a handful of switches and outlets. I mostly have them where my wifi reaches but zigbee and zwave do not. I also have a couple of the in wall outlets. I like these because each plug is individually controllable. I have these in all my outside plugs for Christmas lights. (Note you technically should have a GFCI breaker if you do this for safety / electric code).
I also have a handful of plugs that I use for temporary stuff, like christmas lights again. I leave them in hubitat, and just unplug them. If you do that with a zigbee/zwave plug, you'll screw up your mesh.
Their price point is pretty amazing too vs some zwave /zigbee switches.
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Do not get confused. If you use Hubitat to control a Kasa Device, the status update is nearly immediate (< 1 second). If someone uses the physical switch paddle, the response will average 2.5 seconds (using user-selected 5 second polling). Some people use this as a three way so that when they turn on light A, light B turns on fairly quickly. It is functional enough for the preponderance of cases.
However, the motion detection on the switch is to control the light only - so, when the area MD switch turns on/off Hubitat can detect in 2.5 secs (average) and then through rule machine generate other actions. So it becomes a cost trade between 2 seconds and the added cost of the zigbee/zwave switch.
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Kasa integration is the very reason I purchased two Hubitats. After Insteon and the ISY994i both went defunct, I purchased a couple dozen Kasa devices for each of my two houses (one in CA and one in OR). The first thing I discovered was lags of 2-6 second between turning on a Kasa switch and having a simple plug respond. The commanding is always done through the Kasa cloud. And with that, I discovered that even if my router WiFi was working and the Kasa devices were still connected, all device-to-device functionality was lost. And then the Kasa devices kept falling offline, and I had to restart my router to get them back. Basically the system sucked.
I wanted another solution, but I also wanted to protect my investment I had made in the Kasa devices (about $800 or so). The Hubitat Kasa app came to the rescue. I had to set polling to 5 seconds for a few switches to get lags I could tolerate (actually much better than the native Kasa lags). All new devices I'm getting are Z Wave (single and multiple commanding switches and 4 motion detectors from Zooz, so far). The Kasa devices actually work pretty well with the Hubitat Hubs calling the shots.
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What is your internet connection, and have good signal to your devices? Even from Kasa app / cloud my devices are instant. Something doesn't sound right.
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My Oregon house has fiber with 500 Gbps up and down. Sounds fantastic, but three days ago I had a 27-hour outage, and when it came back up, eight of my Kasa devices remained off-line. None of my other devices had any problem reconnecting at all, including three ESP32 devices I made. This kind of thing has happened before, and I must restart my router to have the Kasa devices reconnect. Problem is, I'm not there at the moment to nurse it back to full operation.
My California house has AT&T DSL service with two bonded phone lines to reach 100 Gbps down, 20 Gbps up. However, it has many "micro outages" each day, ranging from just a few seconds to maybe 20 seconds. Drives my router and Kasa devices nuts. Also affects some Fiet smart switches I use at Christmas. Some of those switches are within eyesight of my router in the garage.
My experience with native Kasa lagging is similar in both houses, so I suspect the problem is with the Kasa servers not being up to snuff, or just the world wide web being overwhelmed from time to time. Astonishing, since TP Link owns Kasa...
OK, some questions:
- What integration version?
- Are you using the Built-in or custom app? (if custom there is something to try).
- Cloud or Local control?
- If LAN, did you assign static IP addresses - as stated in the installation instructions?
Community Integration available option. May not work on the built-in app.
- Suggestion - Run the integration app.
- If your device is cloud, go to cloud installation and update username and password - this will get a new token.
- If your device is LAN connected, start the install process. After the device select page displays, this will update the device IP addresses (if the devices are on your LAN).
There is also a tool to list the devices. This looks for the devices on the LAN and lists them.
- Kasa Integration Utilities - Test Devices LAN Status.... This will list the devices that are on the lan - regardless of installation.
- Walk in closet light, motion sensor, Kasa switch, no polling required
- cupboard lighting, contacts, Kasa switch, no polling required.
- Kasa dimmer as a component of a "Motion zone" used as accent lighting.
The general theme being you can control lots of non-critical lighting scenarios without needing to have the switch feedback.
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Actually, I bought my first Hubitat just three weeks ago for my Oregon house, and Kasa was already a Built-in app, I believe. For each Kasa device, I deselected "Use Kasa Cloud for device control", but I left "Kasa Cloud Binding" selected (didn't understand what it did). I paused all Kasa-native device schedules. The Kasa app installation process worked beautifully, it found all my Kasa devices and listed their IP addresses. I bought my second Hubitat for my CA house about a week ago, and it installed just as well. I have not taken the step of making Kasa device IP addresses static, but I will do so for my CA house. I believe I have run the integration app a couple times, as I sorted out and renamed some Kasa devices, if I understand you correctly. All IP addresses appeared to be fine.
So, all in all, I'm a happy camper with Hubitat, and now I'll focus on keeping the Kasa Devices connected to my WiFi. Perhaps static IP addresses will help with that, so thanks fo the tip.
It may be the down time of the power/router. That can cause routers to reassign IP addresses to devices unless they are reserved.
Dave
This is insanely frustrating but how on earth do I update the password for my kasa integration? I saw that I can export the app which has this setting but I can't restore it / overwrite it. I really don't want to delete all the devices and set everything back up again just to update the password. I'm not using kasa cloud control, all local LAN, but I have kasa cloud binding still enabled (whatever that is). I just want to clear the error message in the log about bad username/pass since I am having some random issues. Appreciate it in advance.
