Flow doesn't always switch both plugs

Questions & Help
,
1

I have a flow that should switch on a Hue plug and a Tapo plug. See attached image.

- If I activate the flow manually, it works fine, and switches both plugs.

- If it is activated automatically, it switches the Hue plug, but may not switch the Tapo plug.

- If I activate corresponding device group (those 2 plugs) with voice command, the command switches the Hue plug, but usually does not switch the Tapo plug. Repeating the command once or twice will switch also the Tapo plug.

What could be wrong here?

Screenshot_20250822_112905_Homey
Screenshot_20250822_112905_Homey1080×2340 113 KB

2

Delay one of the cards with 1s.
This makes the cards not fire at exactly the same time.
(standard flow fires all action cards at the same time, contrary to what you might expect. Oddly enough, Homey can’t handle that when there’s (too) many signals involved)

3

Tried delaying the latter card by 1 sec. Didn’t help.

This morning it took three tries to get both plugs switched. The Hue plug always switches fine, but the Tapo plug has problems.

I changed the order: Hue first, Tapo after 1 sec. Didn’t help.

4

Just to double check, if you:

  • Manually switch on the Tapo plug directly via the device tile, the plug switches on;
  • Manually test/run the flow, the Tapo plug switches on;
  • Let the flow run automatically and with the 1 sec delay in the Tapo flowcard (so not in the Hue card), the plug does not switch on?

And what do you mean by:

5

The Tapo plug is a WiFi device? Any other device on the same frequency? Did you check internet for „tapo plug not working“?

As temp. remedy switch the plug three times on with an increasing delay?

6

Yes, the Tapo P115 plug is WiFi controlled. I made a mistake buying several of them supposing (!) them to be Zigbee.

Homey Pro controls both plugs with WiFi, the Hue thru the Hue Bridge (WiFi / ethernet), and the Tapo directly.

The Tapo plug is on the 2.4 GHz network. There are some old Deltaco WiFi 2.4 GHz plugs on the same network.

7

The Tapo plug tile is not displayed in Homey Pro, as the 2 plugs are grouped to work as one device. So there is only the tile for the combined device.

When manually testing the flow, the Hue plug always works, and the Tapo plug only sometimes works. It takes a few repeats to get also the Tapo plug to react.

In the flow the Tapo plug is on Tapo card, not on Hue card.

As stated above, the 2 plugs are grouped in Homey Pro as a group, that is shown as a tile.

8

What happens if you switch on the group instead of the individual plugs in your flow?

9

If you didn’t already, try the Tapo community app, this uses a local connection instead of internet (Tapo cloud has a limited number of on/off commands);
It supports P115.

10

That’s an interesting suggestion: Such a flow would perform the same action than the Google Assistant voice command, that usually fails to switch the Tapo plug.

That flow cannot be created in the Flow page, but has to be created on the combined device tile itself.

To my surprise this new flow has succeeded in turning on both plugs on all three times it was started either automatically or manually.

Untill it didn’t. It now failed to switch the Tapo plug.

1 Like
11

Thanks for the hint. I installed the app (and it is active), but it does not show up on the available apps for the flows. So it cannot be used.

Screenshot_20250825_074138_Homey
Screenshot_20250825_074138_Homey1080×2340 140 KB

12

Try to install your Tapo device on Homey using one device from this community app. And then you can use that device in your flows.

1 Like
13

Installing the plug with the community app did not succeed. The confirmation page (?) just quickly flashed and vanished.

14

I give up. I could not get the Tapo plug to work reliably.

Therefore I returned the plugs.