Connect TCP Smart Plugs

[Les-Gibson]

@legoman26 

Let's try and walk you through it.

1. On your PC or Laptop, open a browser.
2. Enter 192.168.1.254 into the address bar of the browser
3. You will see a screen similar to the following

4. Click on Advanced Settings (you will be asked to enter the Admin password, this is on the removeable plate on the back of the hub).
5. You will see a screen similar to the following, Note that the Wireless tile will be grey, I've highlighted it blue to make it stand out

Click on the wireless tile, what you see next should be self explanatory.

Change the 2.4 GHz and 5GHz channels as I explained in message 5, you will see from the blue tile above that I am using channels 11 and 48 and I have no problems at all with any of my Smart devices.

[licquorice]

@Les-Gibson please read my explanation in message 6. Your post was message 5 btw

[Les-Gibson]

@licquorice 

Correction Made.

I get your point but mine was to get the OP to move away from (not so) smart channels towards manually selected channels

[licquorice]

Agreed, but unless both devices are on the same band in ad hoc mode, they won't be able to talk to each other. Once they are both connected to the hub, they will talk to each other on the different bands. That is the fundamental problem to resolve.

[Keith_Beddoe]

@legoman26 

Forget about the home hub for a moment.

Most "smart" devices, after a factory reset, start up by transmitting their own wireless network, with their own SSID. They also have their own smartphone app to do the configuration.

On your phone, you need to "forget" your home hub connection to start with, so that the phone does not try to connect to it, as it can make it almost impossible to configure.

The app normally tells you to connect to the wireless network transmitted by the "smart" device. Once the app connects, you can then enter the name and password of your home hub, and it should confirm the connection.

You would then restart the "smart" device, and it will then stop transmitting its own wireless, and connect to your home hub.

You can then re-enable your phone to connect to your home hub as before.

This is how my bird box and CCTV cameras have been initially set up.

[legoman26]

Thanks to all for the info.  I'll give them all ago!

[Keith_Beddoe]

The important part, is making sure your phone with the app, is prevented from connecting to the home hub, during the initial setup of the plugs.

That causes most issues, because you can lose contact with the initial wireless signal from the plug, as your phone will always prefer to connect to the Internet, and can attempt do that while you are trying to configure the plug, so you lose the connection with the app.

The wireless from the plug would show "connected but no Internet" or something similar.

I am guessing that the TCP smart plugs connect the way I have described, as they would have no idea what wireless network name you have at home, until its been configured  via the app beforehand.

You may find that the Smart Life app more reliable, when trying to set them up.