Hubitat Mobile App Released

Doesn’t this go against the “internet free” HA platform that HE is targeting ???

Let’s see, I paid about 100 bucks, to a 16 month old, small Startup company and your saying it’s not polished enough ??
Sorry, but have you ever heard of the saying “Rome wasn’t built in a day” ??

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Agreed @njanda - this seems to be the landscape:
Owner1: The mobile web dashboards aren't sufficient! I need an IOS and Android app immediately!
Owner2: You provided an initial app that supports both systems but it's a "hot mess" - how could you release this?!?
Seems like the definition of being caught between a rock and a hard place, :wink:

Both viewpoints have some validity but since I've migrated to Hubitat, I've been pleased with the support and responsiveness of the Hubitat team. We're getting updates regularly and new features and devices are being added. I also haven't experienced the problems in the app (IOS) that seem to frustrate some of the others.

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Too true! But I bet the Roman citizen surely complained along the way so the leadership knew how to best direct resources.

I love HE. But we need to be frank... I'm having to explain the problems with the app to my family member to raised eyebrows.

I haven't bothered getting everyone in my household the app bc it isn't ready yet. I hope it gets there!

I'm sure It'll get there. But I haven't installed it on my wife's phone yet. I'd rather wait until all of the issues are worked out. There are enough workarounds (dashboard links, Pushover notifications, and Life360 presence) that not having the app that it isn't a huge deal. I look at the app as a convenience that consolidates and enhances dashboards, notifications, and presence so everything is in one place--nothing more.

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Though by all accounts, The ones that complained did get to hang around much longer. :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

Constructive criticism should always be accepted.

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So, after using the mobile app every day for about a month (?)!

I think it is a really great foundation, and I am certain that it will replace Pushover, Life360 and "dashboards in browser". But, for me, it isn't quite there yet.

The biggest issue I have is with location. I just can't get it to work reliably. Every other day it wont register that me or my wife arrives home, so our system doesn't change mode from Away/Armed. It will update sooner or later, often a few minutes after our arrival.

Other times it works great, and I get the notifications (I have debug notifications for every leave/arrival right now) well in advance. I have tried to mitigate the issue by increasing the geofence size, and now it is covering most of our neighbourhood including our local supermarket. But, sometimes even that isn't enough and we have to manually open the app to "force" a location update.

The app updates in background now (my initial problem), but it is like the "polling rate" for location change just isn't rapid enough - and to that, we get logged out od the app now and then. With Life360 (with a much smaller geofence circle) we maybe missed a correct location update once every two months. Now it's a dozen times every week, and a few false alarms already. Sure, we get a notification when the system disarms, but with shopping, kids and so on you don't always think about that - it's just supposed to work. :stuck_out_tongue:

If anyone has ideas for me to try, please tell! For now I'm going back to Life360 for the actual detection, but I'm going to keep the app and the debug notifications for further.. well, debug. :slight_smile:

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I've noticed the app is very slow to load/never loads unless I close and reopen it. This is on a Pixel 2. Not sure what changed as it wasn't this bad before.

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At least yours works.... sometimes. Mine has stopped reporting presence completely on a P2 and P2XL. Tried uninstall/reinstall, clear cache, battery optimization on/off...

For now, I keep using L360

Good luck
Rick

I have also noticed this on my P2XL.

And same on my Pixel 3. Sometimes requires a force stop to get it to load.

I don't know if this was mentioned, but every time when mobile app starting there should be a selection Local/Cloud. Because when switched to cloud - switching back is PITA.
There is no way to switch to Local connection from this

We need a presence refresh button like L360 has. Wife forgot to take phone off airplane mode after Church this morning. I was able to refresh L360 but not HE app.

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On the settings page there is a send geo event button. That has worked for me in the past.

OH yeah, that works great. If I am with my Wife and can get her phone, etc. It's not a good idea in this household to show her how to do that, if you know what I mean...:grinning:

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Congratulations on a new and useful app. Thanks.

Two issues/suggestons.

Geolocation is intermittent on my Pixel phone. Works if I shut off wifi. If connected to wifi, push geolocation event fails.

FYI - all the models of Pixel phones using Google Fi prioritize connecting to wifi over connecting to cellular service. Maybe the Hubitat app needs to better understand wifi/google fi behavior to send geolocation messages

Request/suggestion - Show local IP address of hub in app
I use DHCP and my hub changes IP. Often takes several steps to find new IP. If the app had a way to display IP (drop down menu or other way) I could then easily find the hubs new IP.

Thanks

An easy work-around is to set a DHCP reservation in your router for your hub's MAC address. This will ensure the hub always gets the same IP address. It's very easy to do and all routers should support this functionality.

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Hi

Thanks for reply about DHCP.

  1. Already used up all the 64 fixed addresses available on my ASUS router

  2. Still makes sense to me to have app know both IP and firmware and make available for showing in app. Can never have too much information

My Wife's phone has been stuck on away since Saturday. I was working on something else over the weeked and after the 3rd time of asking her do do something in the app I started getting "THE LOOK". Would make things more peaceful if they can figure out why its getting stuck and fix it.
A bigger geofence won't work. (I've seen that suggested elsewhere) as we pretty much live an 3- 5 mile bubble ( my office is 3 mi from work, not bad for a DFW commute) it would never trigger anything if I set the geofence bigger.

I can go into wife's phone, send geo event and all is OK. It doesn't fail that often, but a refresh like L360 would be handy.

Today both of us were stuck in away even though I was showing in the geo fence. Sending a geoevent wasn't fixing it. took signing in and out out of the app multiple times on both phones to get it to finally register us as being present. We may have to go back to Life 360 until this functionality matures a little bit.