Wled flakiness on esp8266

Issues
1

I have a wled project that is using three “keeYees esp8266 ESP-12E CP2102” controllers running static IPs on my wifi with no AP. The dbm rating of my wifi access point is -36dbm. For whatever reason the following repeatedly occurs:

  1. Cannot find controllers when discover controllers is used on the wled app. (I add them manually to add them at all, thus the static IP)
  2. I receive “device unreachable” or “loading wled ui…” when I try to access any settings on the app for the devices.
    The following is working:
  3. Turning off/on the leds and adjusting brightness via app
  4. Wled device can be seen as connected to my router
    I have tried the following:
  5. Pinged the device, it looks like 50% or so of pings are not going through
  6. Tried disabling wifi sleep, didn’t help
  7. Tried disabling wled AP, nothing changed
  8. Tried accessing the wled devices from a computer, still shows as loading or unreachable

What am I doing wrong? Is there some setting I have missed or misconfigured? Could it be the esp8266 controllers themselves? Would switching to esp32s make any difference?
Anything else I can do to troubleshoot?

2

Your ESP may be faulty.
Try erasing entire flash and upload firmware again (either using on-line web flasher or download binaries locally and use esptool or similar).

If that doesn’t help, your ESP may have issues with the WiFi signal or is faulty. Try to replace AP as well with a different brand (for test).