Is it possible to update the Hubitat software without having to relink and rebuild my Google Home?
So far every time I have to leave/remove my home in the Google Home app, and start over. I have to relink to the Hubitat, allow all the devices, then put them back into rooms in the Google Home App.
Hubitat "rooms" don't carry into the Google Home App, just individual devices.
Just as a potential data point, my Google devices all have reserved IP addresses allocated by DHCP (as well as my Hubitat hubs and Sonos devices and Lutron Caseta hubs).
Static, but my husband changed the ranges for the network, and set a new different IP for the Hub. So perhaps that is when the Hub lost the cloud. The network diag tool tests were fine, and we could log in from our browsers to the newly assigned IP, but no "cloud" & Google could not "find" or connect. I did a jig to release the cloud certificate, but it is not clear that was the fix as things were really odd at that point.
Can I strongly recommend changing that to DHCP reservation on your router. Here’s the issue - your hub seems to have difficulty resolving the name of Hubitat’s cloud server for some period of time post-restart. This in turn breaks your cloud Google Home integration.
Either switch to a DHCP reservation, or configure the hub to use 1.1.1.1 and 8.8.8.8 as DNS servers, and remove any firewall rules that prevent the hub from accessing them on UDP 53.
Do one or the other, not both. Set reservations for ALL iot devices that integrate with hubitat. This insures during a reboot of a device that IP's remain the same.
Generally, you should always use DHCP and configure a fixed assignment on the DHCP server for devices you'll need to access by address. That ensures that any network config changes get populated to all devices, either immediately or following a reboot / DHCP renewal.
If a device has a static IP configuration, it will never see the IP reserved for it on the router/DHCP server. However, devices with static IPs should be configured in a range of IPs the DHCP server won't hand out to any other devices. (E.g. DHCP hands out .100 and up, while static devices go through .99)
It sounds to me like these two pieces of networking guidance have been conflated?
Ever optimistic (not!) I chose to update the Hubitat to yet another software update. These seem to be coming thick & fast ...
Sure enough, when I open the Google Home App, all my devices show as "offline", even 20 minutes later and after I restarted my phone. BUT surprise! I can still turn on/off lights that are "offline". But Google Nest voice will complain that it cannot ... although it does. Clearly the connection is not complete or is incorrect in some way: no proper handshake I suppose.
So I tried reconnecting the Hubitat account with Google, and things got worse: a number of devices are no longer in my Google Home App. When I added them back, they are no longer in my "Home" or in Rooms, so have to be individually edited to recreate a usable Home.
I begin to despair!!!
This is not expected and I have never experienced this issue with either the built in Google Home integration or the community integration. This sounds more like an issue with your local network.