There is a difference between having connection problems, and the device itself shutting down or being unresponsive. In my case, the device had no lights on at all and appeared to have crashed.
My solution, whether you think it is ugly or not, was the only work around for that situation.
When you can’t connect to your device, you should check whether it is showing the full three bars of light on the front or whether some of them are flashing, indicating it is trying to reconnect to Wi-Fi.