u/sunrisebreeze

I've had this Fire Stick 4K Max (2nd gen) about 2 1/2 years. Has worked flawlessly during that time.

Today, suddenly Prime Video stopped working reliably. I can time it: Within 3-5 minutes of playing a video on Prime Video, video playback will start to stutter, then the app will crash and dump me to the Fire TV home screen. This is repeatable and fails 100% of the time within 3-5 minutes of playing any video (TV Show, movie) using the Prime Video app.

Things I've tried: Check for Prime Video app updates and Fire TV stick updates - everything fully up to date; restarting the Fire TV stick; switching between wireless and wired (ethernet) connections; bypassing my ad blocker by setting custom DNS (1.1.1.1); and even factory resetting the device. I thought for sure the factory reset would fix it, but no! That was a waste of 15 minutes.

I'm confident it is not a network or internet issue, as every other app works fine on the Fire TV stick: HBO, Netflix, Hulu, etc. No other app has this issue. Furthermore, I have a Roku TV and the Prime Video app on the Roku TV plays fine, no issues at all.

Since I have company coming next week I ordered an Onn 4K Plus, so I have a backup streaming device in case the Fire TV stick can't get fixed in time. Would appreciate any tips/suggestions.

I've had this Fire Stick 4K Max (2nd gen) about 2 1/2 years. Has worked flawlessly during that time.

Today, suddenly Prime Video stopped working reliably. I can time it: Within 3-5 minutes of playing a video on Prime Video, video playback will start to stutter, then the app will crash and dump me to the Fire TV home screen. This is repeatable and fails 100% of the time within 3-5 minutes of playing any video (TV Show, movie) using the Prime Video app.

Things I've tried: Check for Prime Video app updates and Fire TV stick updates - everything fully up to date; restarting the Fire TV stick; switching between wireless and wired (ethernet) connections; bypassing my ad blocker by setting custom DNS (1.1.1.1); and even factory resetting the device. I thought for sure the factory reset would fix it, but no! That was a waste of 15 minutes.

I'm confident it is not a network or internet issue, as every other app works fine on the Fire TV stick: HBO, Netflix, Hulu, etc. No other app has this issue. Furthermore, I have a Roku TV and the Prime Video app on the Roku TV plays fine, no issues at all.

Since I have company coming next week I ordered an Onn 4K Plus, so I have a backup streaming device in case the Fire TV stick can't get fixed in time. Would appreciate any tips/suggestions.

Camera has been used indoors, climate controlled environment. In use since July 2021, so nearly 5 years.

I noticed a week ago the microphone no longer works. Verified microphone is enabled in app, volume all the way up, etc. Tried rebooting device. No sound is recorded on clips. (Confirmed audio recording enabled in app as it was since day 1).

The only thing I haven't tried yet is a factory reset, because I don't want to lose my recordings on the microsd card. Is it common for the microphone to die on these?

I suppose almost 5 years is a good return on investment for the $25 I paid, but I am baffled as to why the microphone would just fail for no apparent reason.

UPDATE: I'm using a USB 2.0 thumb drive. Will need to switch USB thumb drive or use internal boot drive for faster updates.

EDIT: I upgraded from 7.2.x, not 6.2.x. Apologies for typo.

I upgraded today from unRAID 7.2.x to the latest version. It took over 10 minutes for the archive to download and expand to my USB thumb drive (it’s USB 3.0). Then another 10 minutes before the update finished verifying checksums and it was ready to reboot…

I know it’s possible to boot from an SSD/other drive now, but I prefer to use a USB drive as it frees up drive capacity for unRAID, to use in my array.

Any idea why the upgrading takes so long? It is such a frustrating endeavor. It seems to have gotten slower over time. I do not remember it taking this long a couple of years ago. Could it be that the USB thumb drive is getting too old and I should replace it with a newer USB 3.0 thumb drive?

I have also noticed when stopping the array (which I do before rebooting) or starting it up (done after I reboot), it can take 5-10 minutes just to stop or start the array. And sometimes when I open a new web browser and check, the array has already started, but the other web browser shows the array is still in the starting phase. So it seems the GUI is not accurately reporting array state. Has anyone else noticed that?

I have no idea what is slowing things down but it makes upgrading a tedious chore. Thanks for any insights. One point of good news, the update went smoothly and everything is working just as well as on the last version.

I’ve installed OpenWRT (latest version) on two different routers: Netgear Nighthawk R7800 and Linksys EA7500v2. On both of them I have noticed the same behavior on the 2.4ghz network.

I have some IoT devices (smart plugs/presence sensors) on 2.4ghz WiFi. I noticed a couple to several times a day, some of these devices (not all..) will disconnect for 3 seconds then reconnect to the 2.4ghz network. I am wondering why this is happening. It seems to be random, as it is not always the same devices that disconnect/reconnect.

I tried OpenWRT first with the 7800, saw the issue, then had a EA7500 so I gave that a try. I was baffled to see the same behavior on the EA7500, so this seems to indicate an issue with OpenWRT (it’s the only variable in common).

Why this is an issue: When a presence sensor (I’m using Home Assistant) detects motion, an automation will turn on a smart light switch. If the presence sensor is offline at that moment, then the light switch will not turn on (as the presence sense is not on the network/can’t trigger the light switch) and the automation doesn’t work. I actually had this happen once and troubleshooting revealed the issue (I saw in the Home Assistant device logs for the presence sensor that it was “unavailable” for the 3 seconds during which the automation was supposed to trigger the lights to turn on).

Until this is resolved, I am using Fresh Tomato firmware on a Netgear NIghthawk R7000. That is working flawlessly, and the IoT devices stay connected 24x7. I have seen no issues for weeks at a time with this config. I had used Fresh Tomato before, but wanted to try OpenWRT so that is how I made this discovery.

2.4ghz config in OpenWRT is set to defaults. I set region/country to US (also tried Singapore, as that’s default in Fresh Tomato and works well there) but saw same behavior. Any suggestions/tips/things to try, to get the IoT devices to stay firmly connected to the 2.4ghz network WiFi using OpenWRT? Thanks.