I’m running V1.0.0 of a White series/Matter VTM36 Fan/Canopy module. My issue is that the device, after several weeks of normal usage “disconnects/drops” from the Matter network - I’m using Hubitat as my primary hub, and Apple Home to originally provision the device. When it fails, the parent device shows it disconnected in the Hubitat Matter settings page and the Apple Home Dashboard. The Hubitat driver is throwing “offline” messages on health/ping checks, and most importantly, the Apple Home dashboard is showing as “This accessory is not responding” (where I originally provisioned it).
So my sense is this isn’t a Hubitat or Apple Home specifc controller problem (it effects both). It just seems to have “dropped off” the matter network entirely, and stopped responding to any of it’s connected controllers. I’ve tried a 10 min power cycle on the circuit that controls the fan/VTM36, and it doesn’t recover. I thought it was just a HW failure, but if I factory reset the device, delete it from Apple Home, and from Hubitat, and then go thru reprovising it, it works again (for another 5-6 weeks). - I’m on the third factory reset & reprovision, and the fan canopy is in an outoor deck and fairly high up, so the resets with a ladder are getting old. if this continues, I just may switch to the similar Zigbee module (VZM36)
Is this a known issue, or is there a new version of firmware beyond the initial release (V1.0.0)?
Is anyone else seeing this sort of “disconnected” behavior after weeks of working without issue?
Just experienced the same. Looking at other threads, this appears to be an issue with the white series switches as well. Speculation is that it has to do with thread interference. Definitely a firmware issue. I won’t be purchasing any additional innvelli products until it’s addressed. They’re too expensive to be doing this.
+1 I keep running into this problem. Every few months it loses connectivity to the thread network. However, if I hard reset the power from the circuit breaker, it reconnects just fine.
Is there a firmware enhancement thread for the VTM36?
Just ran into this issue last night for the 3rd time, it’s frustrating because two of those occurrences happen while the fan was on, and I have to physically stop the blade by hand to factory reset the canopy module and re-add to homekit.
We need a response from the Inovelli team in this. Or should we request a warranty?
Hey all – I’ll have to defer to @EricM_Inovelli on any firmware updates as I’m not sure on an ETA, but I want to let you know that we do have this queued up with the firmware engineer to look into.
His priority was to finish the mmWave firmware (done), then move on to the flickering issue some people are experiencing with the dimmers, then this issue with Thread/Matter.
But I at least wanted to confirm that we have this logged and are actively looking into it.
–
In regards to getting it to respond while it’s running - @nammers - do you have this wired to a switch at all? Rather than having to stop the fan with your hand, you should be able to just flip the switch to kill power to it and then turn it back on.
Or, if it’s hardwired to always be on, flipping the breaker would be safer than having to stop it with your hand.
Obviously still not ideal, but I thought it may help in the interim while we figure out what’s going on.
–
I think what would be helpful is to try to understand everyone’s network as while the problem does seem more amplified in the community, this still seems to be an isolated issue, so we’d like to get as much information as possible so we can try to replicate it.
I’ll have either Kaleb or Eric M put together a survey to gather some information shortly. If not, I can whip something up later this weekend or early next week.
I’m very sorry for the issue and please know that we do see this and have logged it as priority.
Same. This happens to me constantly. Every few days, the canopy module becomes completely unresponsive until I hard reboot it (I don’t want to get a ladder out and disassembly the fan every time, so this involves turning the circuit breaker off and on again).
When the device is unresponsive, it becomes unavailable in Home Assistant, of course, but I also have another switch in the room that is bound directly to the light on the fan, and it is also not able to control the light. The switch itself is about 10 feet, maybe, from the canopy module, and always has excellent connectivity.
This really feels like a problem with the Thread radio in the canopy module crashing or running out of memory or something.
Hi @Eric_Inovelli, sorry, this went to Junk for some reason. I do have the Canopy module hardwired to power, and your white series dimmer is being used on the wall. The problem with flipping the breaker is that there is no power to reset the module. When I turn the breaker back on, the fan just continues to spin again. I’ve tried the resetting method with the breaker, but that doesnt work.
Just chiming in here to say I have the same problem - VTM36 hardwired to power becomes unresponsive about once a month and I have to power cycle it at the circuit breaker to respond.
The thread network has 2 border routers – A Sonoff ZBDongle-E connected to HA Green & an apple TV 4K.
Yeah, this is pretty ridiculous. I’m away right now and I’m going to have to walk my wife through all the steps to install HA on her phone, get her connected and flip the breaker on and off. I’m about ready to rip it out and go back to what we had before. This should be a priority. I feel like it’s a HW issue and they aren’t telling us something.
I have three white series smart fan/light canopy modules, and only one is exhibiting this problem. It happens every 5 to 6 weeks. The interesting thing is when I cycled power last time it locked up the other two smart fans/light canopy modules. I then had to reset all of them, and reset some my other devices too (same reset sequence). I then had to reconfigure most of my house. I am now going to take apart my fan in the one that is locked up and manually reset it and hopefully everything goes well.
I’m seeing the same behavior here, across three different white canopy modules wired to the main power, but controlled by white dimmer switches. This is causing significant family strife at this point because these devices just do not work reliably, and when they fall off (every couple weeks randomly), I have to reset the room power at the breaker panel. I’m now resetting breakers every couple days between the three modules.
Moreover, support suggested they do not work well when wired directly to the white switches, so I paid to have them re-wired at significant cost but that made the problem much worse because I can no longer reboot these and fix them by pulling the switch air gap. The white switches themselves meanwhile have never had a connectivity issue in more than a year. Please, please fix the firmware of these canopy devices or offer full refunds. If there’s any info I can provide to help I would be happy to since I really don’t want to have to trash these. I have a large but otherwise stable Matter / Thread network with many HomePods and Apple TVs as the TBRs.
Just wanted to post on this thread as well. I have 3 white series canopies all connected to an Inovelli switch at the wall. One thing I did notice is that all 3 go unresponsive at the same time. It has happened around 3-4 times since I got them. They were pre-ordered so should be early units. Hope this helps in getting a firmware update to fix this. Would love to get 4 more, but won’t until this issue is fixed.
Same issue for me, I’ve got two of the White Series Canopy Modules and they’ll randomly go offline until I flip the breaker. It sounds the dimmer switches already got the fix for White Series dropping thread connectivity, it’d be nice if we could at least get a beta version with just that portion of the fixes for the Canopy module. For network setup, I’ve got Home Assistant hosting the two addons for OpenThread Border Router, and the Matter Server, and then I’ve got a full Unifi network setup. My ISP does NOT provide IPv6 to my home, however I’ve set up the network that Home Assistant is on (and the network I was connected to with my Samsung S24 when I commissioned the canopy module) configured to define a static address, and then am leveraging DHCPv6 with a range of ::2 to ::7d1 (Router Advertisement is enabled, and RA Priority is set to High, as well as Allow SLAAC is enabled). UDM Pro is on 4.4.6, and Unifi Network is on 10.0.160
@Eric_Inovelli Being the founder I find it pretty shocking that you replied on this thread and have yet to follow up since October 10th. This is the first Inovelli product I have purchased and I will likely not purchase any more given there is obviously not an urgency by you or your team to resolve any issues reported by the community. I have purchased 3 of these fan/light canopy modules and have to flip a breaker in my house at least 3 times a week to reset them. Can you please give us an update or direct me to someone who can give us a full refund for these devices you’re clearly aware of issues and not planning to support?
