# Background

After 3 months of trial and error, I've run out of patience with Nanoleaf and officially giving up on the Nanoleaf matter products. I'm going to drop them off at the local distributor's office and get a refund.

In April, I bought a lightstrip starter kit and 16 E27 smart bulbs, along with an Apple TV 4K 3rd Gen as the primary thread border router, because I am using Apple as my primary ecosystem. As many of you are aware, Nanoleaf bulbs frequently disconnect.

After going through round after round of chats between Nanoleaf and Apple support, we still could not pin down the issue. Not sure who to blame - Apple or Nanoleaf, I bought a nest hub max and re-paired everything to use it as the primary border router, sharing the connection over to apple via Google's matter sharing feature.

Things did not improve. In fact, they got worse and I changed the primary border router back to HomeKit. When 3.5.10 arrived, things did not really improve either. Just last week, the lights turned on at 2:30am in the morning. Before you ask, I have no one else on my Apple/Google Home that could be causing the lights to go on and off. My theory: earlier that day, I was testing the connectivity of my bulb by turning it on and off, and one of those commands sent got blocked due to unavailability. That command somehow got delayed for hours and got replayed at 2:30am. I got on with Apple support to get them to check their logs.

But yeah, waking me up while I'm sleeping is the last straw with these bulbs.

Since Apple and Google are both blackbox implementations, I gave up and decided to go down the HomeAssistant route where I get direct access to the logs that prove that this is not an Apple/Google issue. I spent the past week setting up HomeAssistant+SkyConnect and have isolated Nanoleaf as the primary culprit behind the intermittent connectivity as at firmware 3.5.10 (all devices).

# I'll just let the data speak for itself

[Notice how consistent the unavailabilities are on the A19 bulb \(almost as if there is a 2-3 minute cronjob killing the connection\)](https://preview.redd.it/tgsmn7ojtj9b1.png?width=1262&format=png&auto=webp&v=enabled&s=335548f2f279f7b29788701be567fdb4c839d8c1)

[On a long enough timeline, notice how many disconnects there are \(black vertical lines=unavailable, yellow=on, gray=off\) \(the light switch is powered on the entire time\)](https://preview.redd.it/395vvcvltj9b1.png?width=1642&format=png&auto=webp&v=enabled&s=0d6a6c06431ab89458476d91b9d1e3b4d84815b2)

[Same behaviour for essentials lightstrip. Unavailable every 2 minutes.](https://preview.redd.it/w66ijhnotj9b1.png?width=1183&format=png&auto=webp&v=enabled&s=51e9bf814d3a8f8c875df64916a95c8884edfaa2)

[Timeline view - notice the giant gap. It disconnected sometime in the evening and just gave up reconnecting. I had to manually re-pair the device today.](https://preview.redd.it/abr782drtj9b1.png?width=1644&format=png&auto=webp&v=enabled&s=cc0788544dd357369e7a799ec2d307ae1f750ed5)

All 16 bulbs exhibit the same behaviour. One might want to blame thread and matter, given the protocol's infancy. But don't, like I initially did. Thread and matter work just fine:

[I recently purchased some Eve Energy \(matter\) plugs to isolate the issue, notice how infrequent the unavailabilities are. \(They are only directly unavailable when the power is manually turned off\)](https://preview.redd.it/gt1ei22xtj9b1.png?width=933&format=png&auto=webp&v=enabled&s=2d64a4d8da0eb5b7df128f611a72518bd2ae42cf)

[Same thing, in timeline view.](https://preview.redd.it/yvj5rjmztj9b1.png?width=1642&format=png&auto=webp&v=enabled&s=f9a7e65305fc5da9dfacd9b0a5c1bf5b1d68ba49)

What about low-powered (battery) thread devices? You'd think these should have poorer connectivity than the fully powered Nanoleaf devices connected to a power source right?

[Eve Motion \(matter\): Not one disconnect. ZERO, in the time that I've been testing them.](https://preview.redd.it/wbh57bd2uj9b1.png?width=1651&format=png&auto=webp&v=enabled&s=271783707f84f59119c30da03ab72b3c76c157c2)

So here it is. Definitive proof Nanoleaf essentials is broken.

# Buy the upcoming panels, skylight, the GU10 bulbs, the new 4D at your own (very high) risk.

You could use them as normal lights, just don't expect them to work in a smart home.

I sincerely hope my post helps others as no one else needs to go through this. I would not wish this experience on anyone.