Android App Not Showing Devices As Available And Dashboard Issue

[claytonclan]

Hello..

Newbie owner with Hubitat C8 Pro running 2.4.3.133 on a hardwire connection to home network.

I used the search option on this forum and there is a stunning number of articles over the past 6 months, none of which mentioned the problem I am having.

I have been using the web interface over the local LAN to configure the C8 and I'll admit that the learning curve and quantity of reading and trial/error has been significant. With all that said, I do have 5 SengLED E11* bulbs configured into the C* as devices, created rooms to put them in and then used Room Lighting to establish on/off time periods for the bulbs and created a Dashboard with one device in it. Things seem to work overall. There is a few glitches found that will be dealt with later.

This topic is about the Android HE app, version 2.1.3.42 (372) running on a Samsung S22 with the latest Verizon update.

If I put the phone on WiFi to internal network all the devices show up just fine.

When I switch the phone to 4G/local Verizon network and start the Android app I get the following being displayed.

The documentation says to touch the upper left corner to change the state of the bulb which I do for the 'Family Room' icon, which is the bulb itself. The 'FR_RL' is the activator for the 'Room Lighting' rule I created. In my case, touching the upper left corner does nothing at but cause the icon to do a quick blink.

The only place I can touch on the Family Room icon is the 3 dots which gets me a window that lets me change the bulb between RGB/CT, Brightness and Color Temp as well as an On/Off Slider.

If I touch the On/Off slider, I can turn the bulb on/off while on 4G Verizon network!

Should the upper left corner allow me to turn it on/off?

Why do a lot of the icons show up as pink and a sad face icon?

Shouldn't this all work from the phone app while on a 4G/Verizon network?

My thanks for your help on this!

Paul

[bertabcd1234]

@claytonclan

The documentation says to touch the upper left corner to change the state of the bulb

Can you point to where it says this? The correct approach is to tap on the icon, which it later sounds like you're doing, but that isn't the upper left, so I'm confused. The three dots will give you more options, which should also work if you need additional control. There is nothing special about the upper left corner, though.

@claytonclan

Why do a lot of the icons show up as pink and a sad face icon?

They are missing some attribute that the Easy Dashboard or "Devices" tab needs to display something you can view or interact with, or it is a type of device that is not supported by Easy Dashboard or the "Devices" tab at the moment. (Sometimes the former can result from a misbehaving device or an issue with the driver.) Clicking or tapping the three dots will show you more information, so I'd start there.

@claytonclan

Shouldn't this all work from the phone app while on a 4G/Verizon network?

Yes, it should work locally or over the Internet. Are you saying you don't see the frowny faces when local?

[claytonclan]

@bertabcd1234

My thanks for your reply.

Regarding the 'top left of the tile' that I mentioned, within the Mobile App documentation, under Devices, the 3rd paragraph has "For quick control of any device (e.g., to easily turn a switch or bulb on or off), tap the device icon in the top left of the tile. For more control (e.g., to set the level of dimmer or bulb or the setpoint or mode of a thermostat), tap near the center of the tile."

Tapping the top left does not work for me.

Regarding the pink, sad face, if I use the Mobile app connected using WiFi into the same network as the HE, the devices show up as white boxes, if the bulb is on and gray boxes if the bulb is off. I can turn the bulbs on and off by touching the middle of the tile which gets me to a bulb configuration page where I can set any characteristic as well as turn a bulb on/off. There is the side aspect that it appears to be a coin toss about it using the hue/saturation/level settings that I had configured when using the laptop to do all the setup, which is seriously frustrating.

I switched the phone to 4G/Verizon, closed HE Mobile and restarted it and now it won't show any devices. A page refresh just hangs. If I go to Dashboards, it shows the one I created with a single bulb on it. If I touch that Dashboard it shows the icon for the bulb in pink with a sad face.

The last time around I was getting an error message on the app about not being able to get a hue/Level/Saturation value. Yet the device has been defined to the HE and shows up in the laptop web page.

Another interesting test I did was to open the Room Lighting app and use the Activate button, towards the bottom, to turn on the two Porch lights that I have a RL rule for. That resulted in failure with the following in the log file.

Then I rebooted the HE device at 7:24 PM, reconnected the phone to wifi and can see all the devices and change bulb states in the Mobile App.

Then I went back to the Laptop browser window and tried to Activate the RL rule for P_RL (Porch) and that failed with the same Java error above.

Now at 8:15 PM, after doing a fresh start of the Mobile App, I go to the Devices page and 9 of the 10 devices with NONE of them in the pink! It does not show the device for my phone, device yet it does on the laptop web page. When I go to the Dashboard page, it directly shows the one I created with a single bulb in a pink tile.

Curiously, all the Room Lighting Activator devices are showing up as 'Unsupported' in the Mobile App.

Here are some log file entries. First from HUB Events, then Past Logs.

Just to clarify one aspect of what has turned into a confusing reply, at 8:26 I have the following RL for the porch lights.

You will note that Porch 1 and 2, for the two bulbs, show up in Devices to Automate.

If I click on the 'Set Up Lighting Periods or Re-Capture Devices' I get:

And the log entry is:

If I click on the Activate button, to try out the RL rule, only one bulb goes on.

Apologies for the head spinner.

Paul

[bertabcd1234]

OK, there's a lot going on there. I might suggest just re-creating the problematic Room Lighting instance, which appears to be your app:30 that is also throwing a bunch of errors in the first screenshot (one guess as to the cause: did you delete a device that was in use by the app without removing it from the app first?).

The mobile app problem is likely unrelated if it doesn't just involve this device. I'd try either logging out and back into the app or just uninstalling and reinstalling to erase all settings and start over (might be a way to do that on Android without actually uninstalling). Select your hub and existing mobile app device if prompted for either when logging back in again, then there should be no disruptions if you're already using it for automations (e.g., notifications).

[claytonclan]

@bertabcd1234

I'm back looking into looking at the abilities of the Android Mobile App (MA) now that the rules for controlling the light bulbs has completed.

I deleted the old dashboard and created a new Dashboard without a PIN code using the web UI off my laptop. I put three bulbs into the new Dashboard.

Just to start fresh on the phone, I uninstalled the Hubitat Android App on my phone. Then installed it and logged into my cloud account.

My phone is on WiFi into the same internal network that the HE is connected to.

The HE is on a hardwire connected to the internal network.

There is no VPN running on the phone for this test period.

Chrome is the default browser on my phone, which the MA documentation is the recommended browser.

I fire up the HE MA on my phone, put in the username/password for the HE and I get the following.

I touch Devices and get the following displayed.

I touch Dashboards at the bottom of the screen and get:

I touch the one Dashboard and get:

When I touch the 3 dots in the upper right corner I get the following error window.

The MA documentation has nothing about troubleshooting the phone app.

Looking through the various Log File categories on the HE and I see no entries around the time I took the above screen shots.

I did not find any forum articles about 'sad faces' or MA problems along these lines for the past 6 months.

I have gone through the various options within the MA on the phone and did not find anything that provide more info.

How do we troubleshoot problems with the MA on the phone at run time?

My thanks for your help on this!

Paul

[bertabcd1234]

So, have you verified on the device detail page for each problematic device that it's reporting the attributes the Dashboard is complaining about?

[claytonclan]

@bertabcd1234

The following shows up for the three devices within the HE UI off the laptop.

To me, it looks like the UI knows what is going on with the device.

Is there some toggle that needs to be moved to have the devices report what the web UI will report to a remote Dashboard?

Curiously, I fired up the Dashboard within the HE UI on the laptop and have the same problem.

There is nothing in the Device logs showing any activity when I click on something in the Dashboard.

Once again, I am confused.

Paul

[bertabcd1234]

@claytonclan

To me, it looks like the UI knows what is going on with the device.

It doesn't; they're missing the attributes (names and values under "Current States") that the dashboard is complaining about. A Refresh, Set Color, Configure, or (if Zigbee) re-pair without deletion might help, as could making sure you're using a good driver for the device.

[claytonclan]

@bertabcd1234

I admit to further confusion.

Nothing I do 'adds' entries to the 'Current State'.

Manually change Hue, Saturation, Level, color change to RGB, Refresh or Configure.

The bulb is physically turned on.

Still left with:

On an off chance, I clicked on the 'Update Firmware' button and got:

That window disappeared and there has not been any follow-up window. I have no idea where it is/was getting firmware.

Sigh.. I did not scroll down far enough on the Device Info page to get the 'before' info. This is the 'now' data.

That data matches all the other bulbs, so either there is no firmware update or they are at the most recent.

The event file shows:

As for Driver, the device 'Type' shows up as the following for all 5 bulbs.

Which is what an E11-N1EA bulb is and it shows up in the compatibility list.

I have no idea how to do a Zigbee repair without deletion is.

A search of forum and documentation found nothing for the repair option.

Paul

[bertabcd1234]

Is your bulb actually a color bulb?

Have you tried re-paring the device? For Zigbee, don't remove it from the hub first. Just put the hub in Zigbee pairing mode like you did to add it the first time, then reset the device after pairing mode starts. It should discover an existing device. This might help. (A "Configure" should too, but this will make sure it runs and could help with other oddities.)

Also, what does the rest of your Zigbee network look like? How many devices total? Any bulbs that aren't Sengled? Having "repeaters"/routers is particualrly important. I'd suggest looking at this again:

Tips for Sengled Hub Transitions

[claytonclan]

@bertabcd1234

Well, this is interesting.

I have been poking around the Device UI page to get back to something where there are extra values showing under the 'Current States' column is.

Due to age and eye problems, we buy bulbs that generate a bright white color.

When I was doing the initial setup of the SengLED bulbs into the newly purchased HE, I came to the conclusion that to get back to the highest level bright white 'color' of the bulb when the SengLED hub was controlling them was to put the bulb into 'CT' Color Mode, setting Color Name to Skylight, Color Temp to 6500 and Level to 100. Hue and Saturation defaulted to 0 when in CT mode. I can not set Hue and Saturation when the Color Mode is CT.

That shows up as the following in the UI.

Which for the dashboard issue shows up as a sad face with the complaint of not being able to get Hue, Saturation, Color.

Now, IF I set the color to a some RGB color, the Current States column now shows Hue, Saturation and Color! AND it now shows up correctly in the Dashboard!!!

However, the bulb is not what I call a bright white color.

Dashboard:

I can click on Nick Bedroom now in the dashboard and it works!

To me, this means that the Dashboard can not deal with the Color Mode set to CT.

Shouldn't the Dashboard be able to successfully deal with bulbs in CT mode?

Paul

[claytonclan]

@bertabcd1234

I only have 5 SengLED color bulbs, which is the only things the HE knows about.

Everything on the same internal network.

Everything within 20 feet of one another.

No mesh anything.

All 1Gb.

Paul

[bertabcd1234]

@claytonclan

Now, IF I set the color to a some RGB color, the Current States column now shows Hue, Saturation and Color! AND it now shows up correctly in the Dashboard!!!

However, the bulb is not what I call a bright white color.

Yes, probably not; hue 0 is red, and while saturation 0 is effectively white, who knows what shade/color temperature.

You should be able to run "Set Color Temperature" to get it back to some known white. (The hue/saturation attributes will not disappear when you do this, if that is what you are concerned about.) My personal preference is below 6500 for indoors (5000 and even 4000 are plenty cool for my liking if I don't want warm white), but setting to 6500 should certainly work if you prefer it and it's in range of the device, which it appears to be!

Since there also seems to be some confusion:

• "Color Name" is a read-only/calculated attribute. There is no way to directly set it, but it is a side effect of color or color temperature.
• "Color Mode" will be "CT" when in color temperature mode or "RGB" when in color mode.
  • In color temperature mode, the "Color Temperature" attribute reflects the current "color" (color temperature) of the device.
  • In color mode, the "Hue" and "Saturation" attributes reflect the current color.
  • "Level" reflects the current level in both modes.
  • The other attribute values will still be populated with the last known values (somehow they weren't in your case before; that shouldn't be a problem now) but do not mean anything when in a mode where they are not relevant.

[claytonclan]

@bertabcd1234 @bobbyD

My thanks for the clarifications on the values/names.

The problem remains.

Why can't a Dashboard correctly deal with a SengLED color bulb, E11*, in CT Color Mode? Why isn't it detecting the CT Color Mode and not asking for Hue and Saturation?

@bobbyD - Can you help out on the question above?

Take care.

Paul

[bertabcd1234]

It can. This should not be a problem. Have you tried since doing the above with every affected device, or are you making assumptions based on the previous behavior of some? (The only remaining problem I saw you describe above is that the bulb is set to some white-ish color and not your desired color temperature, which running Set Color Temperature will address.)

If it is still a problem, please share the following:

1. A screenshot of the device detail page for the affected device, specifically including the "Current States" section;
2. A screenshot of the dashboard tile as you see it; and
3. A screenshot of the details you'll see if you click on the '...' icon on that tile, assuming you do still have a problem.

To be clear, the current state of the device does not matter; the dashboard requires all attributes it's looking for to be present, and the fix is to try something that will make them all have some value, as it sounds like you may have done above for one device. Do that for the rest.

[rlithgow1]

@claytonclan

Newbie owner with Hubitat C8 Pro

Tim Tim Tim....

[claytonclan]

@bertabcd1234 @bobbyD

Robert...

I am burning it all down and starting fresh, which I am documenting. I will post that documentation in the next day or so.

I have some questions for you.

Starting point.

Have a SengLED E11-N1EA bulb that has been factory reset by quickly doing 10 power cycles. The bulb did the expected multiple blink after the power cycles.

This bulb is NOT currently known to the HE.

The E11-N1EA bulb is known as a 'Sengled Element Color Plus' within the HE.

I take this bulb through the HE Zigbee pairing sequence successfully and it shows up in the HE Devices list as available for use.

I turn this bulb on and off from the HE Devices web page of the UI using my laptop.

I make ABSOLUTELY NO CHANGES to the Bulb Device that shows in the HE UI on my laptop.

I create a HE Dashboard in the UI and add this newly created E11-N1EA bulb Device to it.

Would you expect this bulb to show up in the dashboard and display its current state, either on or off and be able to turn this bulb device on and off?

Would you expect to be able to touch the '3 dots' in the top, right side of the tile for this device to see the color configuration? And change that color configuration?

As for your last paragraph.

" To be clear, the current state of the device does not matter; the dashboard requires all attributes it's looking for to be present, and the fix is to try something that will make them all have some value, as it sounds like you may have done above for one device. Do that for the rest."

The dashboard may want/expect a defined set of parameters. To make the statement that it is my responsibility to 'continuously fiddle with all the device parameters in the Device page UI in some fashion in order to try to get all the parameters to exist' is frankly, a ridiculous expectation/requirement.

THE FIX is for the initial pairing of the light bulb to create the parameters that are expected/required by all parts of the HE, even if they are NOT used by the Device such that the Device AND Dashboard interfaces to the bulb function as expected. Or for the Dashboard to realize that when this bulb is in CT mode that there are some variables that do not exist.

To be clear, there is a problem with missing parameters in this use case when running Version 2.4.3.133 and SengLED E11-N1EA bulbs. So yes, until such time that HE Support fixes this problem, I AM left with continuously fiddling with all the device parameters in the Device page UI in some fashion in order to get all the parameters to exist.

Which is not optimal or desired.

Paul

[bertabcd1234]

@claytonclan

Would you expect this bulb to show up in the dashboard and display its current state,

Yes, but whether it actually will still depends on the presence of all color- and CT- related attributes mentioned above.

@claytonclan

Which is not optimal or desired.

To be clear again, I agree; what you described above is, as I stated just now, how it should work. I am simply proposing the solution for you when it does not.

I am not sure what's going on in your case, other than that this does not appear to be a widespread problem (and other than the misunderstandings discussed previously and repeated in this above post, though they are of less consequence; but notably, there is no "continuous fiddling" but rather a one-time fix per device). It could be something unique to the particular firmware on your bulbs, your network health and apparent lack of Zigbee repeaters (see the doc I linked to above), or some combination of these or other factors that make every Zigbee setup unique. Starting over is unlikely to change anything on its own.

[claytonclan]

@bertabcd1234 @bobbyD

I have deleted all the dashboards, apps and devices.

Now doing the standard device add for SengLED E11-N1EA bulb for the 5 devices.

The following is what was done for all 5 bulbs.

I now have the 5 bulbs back into the device list.

Here are device details after the 5 bulbs have successfully being added to the HE.

You will note the lack of the Hue and Saturation values in all 5 bulbs in the Current States box.

I create a dashboard containing all 5 bulbs and open it up.

Clicking the 3 dots, gets me the following error window.

Within the device page for a bulb, there are options to set color, hue and saturation among other things.

Clicking the Set button within the 'Set Color' box, which says it is for Hue, Saturation and Level, reports Command Submitted but the only changes in Current States is Color Mode goes from CT to RGB and Color Name goes to Red. The actual bulb has a slight Reddish tint.

Why didn't the Hue and Saturation Level show up in the above screenshot of Current States?

A refresh of the dashboard still shows the sad face and the error message.

Clicked on Set within the 'Set Hue' box gets a Command Submitted and the Current State now shows a Hue variable.

The Dashboard is a sad face and the error message is now:

Clicked on Set within the Set Saturation box, got Command Submitted and Current State changed.

The Dashboard now shows an active bulb and clicking the 3 dots shows bulb state and color.

If I click within the color window in the Dashboard, the values in the Current State of the HE Device UI page change values.

When I switch from RGB to Color Temperature in the Dashboard I get the following window.

When I move the Color Temperature to max at 6500 (bulb rating) but 6024 on the Dashboard, the bulb goes bright white.

Bottom lines:

1. We have 5 SengLED E11-N1EA bulbs, which were bought in 2 batches years apart, showing the same problem in the Dashboard.
2. The Dashboard complains about not having Hue, Saturation and Color parameters on all 5 bulbs after adding them to the HE and a new Dashboard. The 'Current State' column does not list Hue and Saturation. There are 3 entries with the word 'Color' in them.
3. Clicking the Set button in the 'Set Color' box in the Device Details window, even though it lists values for Hue and Saturation, will NOT create the Hue and Saturation variables in the 'Current States' column. You need to click the Set button in both the 'Set Hue' and 'Set Saturation' boxes in order to create the Hue and Saturation variables.
4. Curiously, after creating the Saturation variable, the Dashboard no longer complains about missing the 'Color' variable. Yet there are no new 'Color' entries in the Current State column.

I think this documents what I have been saying in this thread.

Paul

[bertabcd1234]

I believe this all looks the same as before, but thanks for the confirmation! I tested with a spare bulb I found in my box of things and replicated similar behavior.

A future 2.4.3 build, perhaps not the next but something soon, should have a solution for this for new installs (or for "Refresh" on existing installs). For now, as mentioned before, the workaround would be manually setting hue and saturation to (almost) any value so all attributes are populated on "Current States" on the device detail page. This is unrelated to dashboard or the mobile app "Devices" tab, local or remote access, or a number of distractions above.

If anyone is curious, what made these devices particularly tricky is that the default for most (all?) of these attributes on the device itself is apparently 0, and there was an oddity that prevented the driver from seeing those as a "new" value if there wasn't any value there before, as is the case during initial install. So, that's the one value that won't work if you do this manually -- the "almost" in "almost any value" above. But again, hopefully not a concern much longer...