Done with Hubitat Homekit for now

🧰 Built-In Apps and Drivers HomeKit
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I gave it a fair shake, moving all of my devices from two locations (and hubs) from Homebridge to the native Homekit support on day one of availability. Moving it all back to Homebridge today.

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I've read most posts here to figure out how to make it work reliably but it's just too brittle. Even with hourly restart and various other "fixes", even with just one device (Garage Door), it eventually shows "Not Responding" for the device(s) and Bridge. Nothing fixes it, short of a complete reset which is time consuming. And even that often leads to Can't Add accessory when trying to add the bridge again. Phone or Hubitat restart will sometime fix it, sometimes not. There are no logs to peruse, no way to understand what's happening.

I look forward to more attention being brought to this particular app and will scan the updates release notes for improvement but as it is, it's just not reliable enough to use. When it works it's the best way to control your home on iOS. And I am sure it works fine for many of you, it just never quite did for me.

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Yeah I did testing on it under a separate test "Home" but kept my Homebridge setup going. Since I use Homebridge and that server for other things there is not really any benefit for me to move off it, server would still need to be running. I also think offloading to a server make more sense, the hub is just sending the events to HB and then that server can process and handle everything talking to Homekit. My setup using HB has been very stable.

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Interesting. I've had the exact opposite experience. Hubitat stuff brought into HomeKit has been extremely stable for me. No reboots or resets.

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I am going to be interested to see if fixing the recently brought up mDNS issues will have an impact on Homekit (hopefully making it work better). Seems curious since HK relies heavily on mDNS to function.

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As a note, I run a C-7 w/ 2.3.8.140. The other site is also a C-7 on the beta releases.

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I have to say that after some reboots I too have problems that HK does not work anymore, Also most of the time after a power outage probably because my stupid router takes so long to boot up (need to change that ASAP but $$).

Since it's just a part of my presence sensing, it's not 100% necessary at the moment but we do like having a few lights available on there like outside lights, gazebo, etc. Nice to be able to just open the phone and having access rapidly to these without having to go back to the switch inside or opening the Hubitat app and going through all switches or selecting the right dashboard.

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Just to add a data point, I have 3 hubs, (all C-8 now, but one was a C-7 until recently) all connected to HomeKit (running on an Apple TV) using the Hubitat integration. Sharing hundreds of devices of all types including real and virtual switches, sensors of all types (motion, contact, humidity, presence, temperature, illuminance, etc.), garage door openers and thermostats and I have not had any issues. (Yet…?)

I wonder what could be causing issues in your case… maybe some problematic device drivers?

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Myself as well.

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Totally valid, it works for a number of people, maybe most. That makes it more frustrating for me. There is no way for me to know why it breaks so often without changes.

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Not sure if it’s just wishful thinking, but after weeks of “No Response” and HE reboots, I haven’t had the issue for several days.
While trying to debug this issue, I created a “is HomeKit connected” rule.
I created two virtual switches, pingHome and pingAck, and shared them with HomeKit.
I added a simple HomeKit Automation that turns on pingAck whenever pingHome is turned on.

In the rule, I first turn off both switches and delay for a couple of seconds.
Then I turn on pingHome and wait for pingAck to be turned on, with a 20 second timeout.
Then I check if pingAck is on (or if it timed out.)
I log the result.
The rule is triggered each minute.

Well, I got timeouts, but the next attempt one minute later ALWAYS succeeded.
Checking the logs revealed no suspicious activity.

So, I put two of the “both off, delay, pingHome, check for pingAck” sequences in a row and only checked if the second one failed. It hasn’t yet, and the No Response issue hasn’t returned.

I have recently moved the check to once every 15 minutes and I only log failure (none yet).

I’m a happy camper for now.

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Nice, so maybe the people who do not have problems have much more activity on a regular basis? Seems like you just sending out those keep alive checks might be enough to keep it going.

Many people might have things like temp sensors shared which send out frequent updates, do you have any of that or only switches and other normally idle devices?

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I only have a few but they only update on delta change. Most everything else are lights, doors, etc.

To @Hubitat_Staff : If we had debugging or logging on HomeKit Integration, it would make these issues much easier to understand and solve.

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I am not sure, I pretty much open/close my garage door 2-3 times a day.

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Yeah I was thinking more of at least hourly. Maybe something like @TArman setup just like flipping a switch back and forth once an hour (or every 30 minutes) would be enough to keep it alive.

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Currently ping it every 15 minutes but will try 30 to see if works.

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As @TArman said, we need to be able to diagnose what's happening with the Homekit integration. The only thing we have is whether something is connected to it (and I think that's the Home Hub that provides external access to HomeKit, an AppleTV in my case)

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I have devices on three hubs connected to HomeKit. Two of the hubs have fairly frequent updates as they have thermostats with temp/humidity sensors. The third hub however, has no regular updates at all. It can be weeks between HomeKit making requests of this hub. However there are still no problems commanding these devices when requested.

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@jtp10181 Looking at mine, it's mostly lutron switches, door locks, and some outlets and a thermostat. No sensors. Not sure if any keep alive checks are being sent.

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FWIW, if I were looking for a potential difference between those that work and those that don't, the first place I would look is to the device(s) managing HomeKit. In my case, I have two AppleTV 4Ks that provide the management, and have no HomePod devices at all.

I would also look to confirm that each and every Apple device that shares the Home has been upgraded to current version of Home (management by AppleTV/HomePod). If any of them are older devices that cannot be upgraded to the current version, they should be removed from Home. If you have any "ghost" Home devices, they should be removed as well. Be sure to reboot all the management devices following this.

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Hopefully @Hubitat_Staff gathers that info to help with debugging.

I have a 1080p ATV on one site and a 4k ATV on the other, latest TvOS on both. No Homepods. All sites are upgraded to the "newer" Homekit. No ghost home device. Everything has been rebooted a thousand times.