C5 Homekit App unresponsive

I've been running the new HomeKit app for some time now and although it had some stability issues early on, keeping the "Restart Hourly" checkbox checked had kept is stable, until a few weeks ago.
It started having "unresponsive" issues that would only resolve with a reboot, but they would come back a few hours later. I found unplugging the hub for 30 seconds then plugging it back in would fix things for a few days and then the issues just went away. I have been keeping up on new firmware really regularly but had not seen anything in the changelings to indicate something with HomeKit had been fixed.
A couple days ago the unresponsive behavior returned only now reboots and long power cycles do not keep it stable for more than a few hours again.

In summary:

  • Homekit accessories are unresponsive after a few hours
  • Reboots and long power cycles do not fix it
  • Once power cycled, accessories do work for a short time.
  • Web UI is fine.
  • Just now installed 2.3.5.141, was on 2.3.5.138 (I think)
  • HomePods did just upgrade to 16.5 but I don't know if this started to become a problem again before the upgrade, I kind of feel like it did, so not convinced it's tied to the HomePod upgrade.

Has anyone else reported this? I'm afraid it might be a hardware problem with something dying in the hub.
Any help would be appreciated.

There's nothing specific in the hardware for HomeKit. It's just another LAN communication. The same hardware that lets you browse the Hub's UI is what is used for HomeKit Integration. CPU, Memory, Ethernet I/O.

2 Likes

Are you doing a proper shutdown, or just pulling the plug?

@csteele Great point. Made me think to check if the hub can still control the devices when the HomeKit app stops working and it can, so now I'm thinking it's not hardware.

@jameslslate At first I was doing a restart but that was causing it to work for a very short period of time and I found pulling the plug without shutting down fixed it for longer. I'm assuming by the question that this is maybe not a good practice.

I'm going to update to 2.3.5.146 and turn off the HomeKit app auto restart to see if either of those help.

It is best practice to use the Shutdown option, then when it says it is OK, unplug from wall. This avoids potentially corrupting the database.

1 Like

@jameslslate @csteele I did as I said above. Installed latest version and turned off auto restart app every hour and it failed again last night just before bed time. I double checked that I could still turn lights on and off from the web UI still.
Manually restarting the HomeKit integration app using the button at the bottom did not fix it but rebooting from the web UI did.

Any thoughts on next steps? Are there some logs I can post here?

Every problem I've ever had with Homebridge has been self inflicted. I have Hubitat's HomeKit Integration installed and working, but it just has all my 'least used' devices. I built the Homebridge instance 4-5 years ago, and have no need to switch except just to switch. I'll spend a bunch of time, just to arrive back where I am. :slight_smile:

I've had Hubitat's HomeKit Integration added since it first came out, and I have 6-7 devices selected. Every week or so I give something a click/tap to verify it's all working, and so far, it is stable. The big thing I don't do is select/deselect devices. During the first 10 iterations of the code, this was where all the gremlins lived.

I just looked and it's still working correctly, and I realize I did add a device in the past 2 weeks. So.. that's all working without fuss for me.

All of that is to say.. you're right, it should be quite stable and you're not seeing that. On the other hand, I'm not sure how to test it.

Still having the same problem. It will stop working every 3 days or so and restarting the hub fixes it.
Hoping someone sees this and helps me out. Getting really annoying.

I would start with unplugging all Apple Home hubs (TVs, HPMs) and plug back in. Then reboot your iPhone and router. I have been very stable with a lot of devices shared to HK. It seems like there were some improvements with ios 16.6 (currently living dangerously on ios 17/tvos 17 with no issues). Also, your router could be the issue as HK requires multicast to function properly in order to work. I previously had a Netgear router and had nothing but trouble with anything that required mDNS. Getting a different router fixed that.

1 Like