tplink-lightbulb: Unable to scan or connect to wifi

model and hwId both look like reliable indicators of which device it is.

Agreed. I’d prefer to not keep a big table of all the supported versions (it’s more fragile, and requires a lot more maintenance.) I think we might be able to try some other stuff to figure it out, though. I am ok with the fall-through for now, but I bet it could be improved.

mic_type might be useful? Says IOT.SMARTPLUGSWITCH for a dimmer which is odd

I saw this on mine, too. super-weird.

Please continue tracking this issue at #61, as it’s really a separate thing.

Here’s the full details for all my devices in case it’s helpful. Couple possibilities:

• model and hwId both look like reliable indicators of which device it is.
• mic_type might be useful? Says IOT.SMARTPLUGSWITCH for a dimmer which is odd, maybe there are only a few possible values here which would be easy split into 2 groups.

Thanks again!

hw_ver on info call appears on both (although those that support long message-type give better info) and long messages seem to be "2.0". Shorter format appear to be "1.0". This is only on the devices I personally own, though.

Unfortunately hw_ver doesn’t seem to be a reliable indicator - all 3 of my devices (KL130 + 2 HS220s) return hw_ver: '2.0', but the bulb uses smartlife.iot.common.softaponboarding while both dimmers use netif.

I did notice that sw_ver matches for my dimmers, but is different for the bulb. Dimmers both have sw_ver: '1.0.3 Build 200326 Rel.082355' while bulb has sw_ver: '1.0.6 Build 200630 Rel.102631'. I’ve read about TP-Link pushing firmware updates that modified the API in the past so maybe that could be it? I’ve had the dimmers longer, and I firewall all these by MAC before installing them, so they have whatever firmware they came with.

Wow looks like a pretty significant rewrite, great work!

After cloning the repo everything seems to be working fine! Here’s everything I tried, devices were factory reset before each test:

• KL130: Scan wifi networks (works), join wifi (works)
• HS220 (dimmer that uses netif): Scan wifi networks (works), join wifi (works)
• KL130: Join wifi without scanning first (works)
• HS220: Join wifi without scanning first (works)

I didn’t even need to mess with the bash script, everything worked fine with node src/tplight.cjs <cmd> <ip>.

One very minor note: when scanning for networks the output formatting is different depending on if the device uses “old style” or “new style”. Doesn’t really matter since the user will likely only see one or the other, but probably an easy fix.

Device using netif:

jamedeus@desktop:~/tplink-lightbulb$ node src/tplight.cjs wifi 192.168.1.233
[
  { ssid: 'Solomon', key_type: 3 },
  { ssid: 'jamnet', key_type: 3 },
<removed due to length>
]

Device using smartlife.iot.common.softaponboarding:

jamedeus@desktop:~/tplink-lightbulb$ node src/tplight.cjs wifi 192.168.1.225
[
  {
    ssid: 'jamnet',
    key_type: 3,
    cipher_type: 2,
    bssid: '<removed>',
    channel: 5,
    rssi: -48
  },
  {
    ssid: 'Solomon',
    key_type: 3,
    cipher_type: 2,
    bssid: '<removed>',
    channel: 6,
    rssi: -65
  },
<removed due to length>
]

I think it’s this part I am guessing that r.netif.get_scaninfo is not defined.

It looks like this is sending {"netif":{"get_scaninfo":{"refresh":1}}} which I can confirm is unsupported by this bulb - I get the same error when I try in the python client:

jamedeus@desktop:~/tp-link-python-client$ ./tplink_smartplug.py -t 192.168.0.1 -j '{"netif":{"get_scaninfo":{"refresh":1}}}'
Sent:      {"netif":{"get_scaninfo":{"refresh":1}}}
Received:  {"netif":{"err_code":-2001,"err_msg":"module not support"}}

After changing this line to 'smartlife.iot.common.softaponboarding': { wifi scan works correctly:

jamedeus@desktop:~/tplink-lightbulb$ node ./src/cli.js wifi 192.168.0.1
{
  "smartlife.iot.common.softaponboarding": {
    "get_scaninfo": {
      "ap_list": [
        {
< Removed due to length>

Seems like this part could be fixed by trying smartlife.iot.common.softaponboarding if netif fails since there isn’t a way to determine the target bulb (and it’s required syntax).

However, I’m still unable to join after making this change - but I get a new error:

jamedeus@desktop:~/tplink-lightbulb$ node ./src/cli.js join 192.168.0.1 <creds removed>
TypeError: wifi.find is not a function
    at Object.handler (/home/jamedeus/tplink-lightbulb/src/cli.js:252:27)
    at processTicksAndRejections (internal/process/task_queues.js:95:5)

I then reverted my changes to lib.js and tried to join again. I still get the new TypeError: wifi.find is not a function error. Seems to indicate that the original error is resolved now that ap_list is defined.

I was able to connect after editing src/cli.js line 252 and arbitrarily declaring const chosen = argv.SSID, disabling the check to see if it exists in the wifi list:

jamedeus@desktop:~/tplink-lightbulb$ node ./src/cli.js join 192.168.0.1 <creds removed>
{
  _: [ 'join' ],
  '$0': 'src/cli.js',
  ip: '192.168.0.1',
<creds removed>
}
OK, joined jamnet.

So something seems to be going wrong when it parses for argv.SSID in the wifi list.