Sunday 22 March 2015

TP-Link Powerline Adapters - Failing on Pairing

I've just spent ~1 hour trying to get a pair of Powerline adapters to .... pair.

This involved pressing a "Pair" button on one adapter and then running through the house to press the corresponding "Pair" button on its .... pair.

The answer ?

RTFM ( Read The Flippin' Manual )


To paraphrase: -

Step 1:
Press and hold the Pair button of Powerline adapter A for 1 second, the Power LED will start flashing.

Step 2:
In 120 seconds, please press and hold the Pair button of adapter B for 1 second, the Power LED will start flashing. About 60 seconds later, the Powerline LED on both adapters will light up.


The key ?

Yes, press for ONE second.

For the record, I have the TP-Link AV200 WiFi adapter ( with two Ethernet ports ), connected to my TV and my Humax PVR, plus an associated adapter next to my router. I've got another one lurking around somewhere else, connected to my NAS and my Mac Mini.

16 comments:

IdoNotes said...

Did you consider pairing them on the same plug or same room then moving it? Thats how I did all of mine during testing

Howard said...

I think I called support and they had me use the software to pair them rather than the button. It worked then.

Dave Hay said...

Calling a helpdesk, that's such an old-school thing to do, this from me who used to work in a helpdesk back in the 1990s :-)

Dave Hay said...

@Chris, no, that'd be far too sensible, and I need the room-to-room exercise :-)

A Voice in the Wind said...

After I paired them once I thought I had to re-pair them again on a new plug... I was wrong. You're not alone on silliness with these.

Dave Hay said...

Yeah, when they work, they're awesome ....

Unknown said...

This may sound stupid but when trying the same plug/room technique do they both need to be plugged into the appropriate device? In other words, do I need to kart the tv over to the where the phone socket is?

Dave Hay said...

John

Good question. For me, it was simpler to plug all three PowerLine adapters into a four-way "gang" socket, set them all up, and then move each adapter to its target location - behind the router, behind the TV, behind the PC desk etc.

Cheers, Dave

andy said...

Just wanted to say what worked for me.

All the instructions say to press 'pair' on one device, then in 120 seconds, press 'pair' on the other device, wait 60 seconds and they should pair.

I tried this numerous times, also resetting the network by pressing for 10 seconds, all combinations, same power sockets, spent about 45 minutes, and nothing worked ..until I decided to ignore the 'in 120 seconds'. It seems strange to me to wait until the flashing stopped to try and pair the other device. So I pressed 'pair' on one device and when the lights starting flashing, I then pressed 'pair' on the other device and almost immediately they paired. Job done.

Why on earth it says wait for 120 seconds I have no idea!

Dave Hay said...

Hi Andy, thanks for this - these are great devices, when they work, but occasionally I need to reset ( as I did yesterday ), or re-pair them. Cheers, Dave

andy said...

Agreed they are fantastic. I must be lucky as I've been using mine for 6 years non stop and haven't had one single problem - until yesterday when the pairing dropped. I work from home and use it for my IP phone in my upstairs office, as the router is downstairs. I used to have wires trailing all over the house, dark days!

Dave Hay said...

Strange coincidence perhaps, but the TP-Link that's connecting my ADSL modem/router to the rest of the house appeared to die yesterday. Whilst wireless was still working perfectly ( iPhones and iPads ), nothing that was relying upon the wired connection via TP-Link could connect, including Macs, TV, PS4 etc.

I rebooted the TP-Link at the router end, which thus rebooted the router, and all was well.

Symptom-wise, I was unable to access the culprit TP-Link from the utility software, and wasn't able to get IP addresses from the two wired Macs once I released their existing IP addresses.

At that point, I started shopping for new TP-Link or Devolo adapters, before heading downstairs to reboot it - I've NOT pushed the button on replacements YET!!

Unknown said...

@andy I am still chuckling. It should read WITHIN 120 seconds, press the Pair button on the 2nd TP-Link. That's to give you enough time to sprint through the house if you are @David Hay and you don't have a multi-story mansion.

Dave Hay said...

Hey, some of us like sprinting around the house, especially whilst wearing a smart watch to track calories burned !!

Jml said...

Well I've just experienced the problems that others have described and can I get them paired ? Can I heck :( :)

I've tried every suggestion here with no success. Why on earth do things like this gave to be so complicated - can't we just have plug and play ?

Mark Selby said...

Great post, I appreciate your in-depth knowledge on this topic. I recently wrote a blog post on a similar topic reset TP-Link extender. It complements your points and might be interesting to your readers. Click on the link to read.

Visual Studio Code - Wow 🙀

Why did I not know that I can merely hit [cmd] [p]  to bring up a search box allowing me to search my project e.g. a repo cloned from GitHub...