I have a Hubitat C8 that I'm just doing very basic things with, nothing fancy at all (about 20 devices, dashboard and basic button controller apps). It was crashing every day, so I did a hard reset and manually put everything back in from scratch and its crashing less but still crashing about once a week. When it crashes I cannot access it via my network and it doesn't do any automations. I have to unplug it and plug it in again and let it reboot. Then I get another week out of it.
I can't figure out how to see logs that say why it crashed. Can someone give me a pointer please??? Thank you so much.
You are likely dealing with a hardware malfunction. If you didn't do so already, I suggest creating a warranty case by visiting the following page: Warranty – Hubitat Support
It's out of warranty unfortunately. I bought it at the beginning of a construction project on my house and tested it at the time to see if it would work for me, which it seemed to. I put it back in the box and am trying to get it to work for real now.
But thanks for the link. If it turns out to be bad hardware I'm willing to buy another one, I don't think there is a solution that is better for me than hubitat assuming it actually works.
When it crashes can you see if you can access the diagnostic tool?
It you browse to <hub_ip>:8081. You will need to enter the mac of your hub to log in and you can reboot from there.
I had this issue with one of my C5s for a few weeks in a row. I thought it was bad hw and replaced it with a spare C7 only to have it happen two more times. And this hub only had lan and cloud connections. Both radios disabled.
I am still not certain of the root cause yet but I rolled back on my rachio integration version and paused a couple maker API sources and I appear to be stable again after about a month of no issues.
Frustrating thing is I had nothing in my logs that I could see that would point me in any direction.
OK, I did the database rebuild. The UI for that didn't work - it just stayed stuck on the rebooting screen forever. I have the hub as a dynamic IP address and it was trying to do the UI from the hub's previous IP address. I had to get it find the hub again to get my UI back. Am I supposed to make the hub's IP address static?
I'm doubtful that the database rebuild will fix my problem since I've already tried completely starting from scratch with a factory reset, and that didn't work.
Are some of the software versions buggy? Earlier today I 'upgraded' to the latest version of the firmware and my hub crashed within a few hours rather than its usual one week uptime.
By the way I'm very concerned that simply power cycling could cause it to corrupt its database in a way that requires manual intervention. That doesn't seem like a real product to me. Makes me re-think the idea of Hubitat altogether. As an ambassador could you please tell me that I misunderstand the situation?
I am using a Google Home mesh network. I'm not clear on how it works, but it seems to have a bunch of routers on the same channel. Could that be confusing the C-8?
I've read that jumbo frames are kryptonite to the C-8. I couldn't find an option for jumbo frames or MTU on my router but there is one for RTS fragmentation which has a relationship with MTU. I brought the RTS down in the hope that this would eliminate jumbo frames if in fact I have them at all. (I kinda doubt that there are any jumbo frames in my network, because it appears there are a lot of devices that don't like them.)
Response to jtp10181 as far as trying everything in what he posted:
"Help for General Hub Problems". It listed one solution ... database rebuild. I did it yesterday and the hub was unresponsive this morning.
"Unresponsive Hub Web UI".
A. Make sure the device is connected to the same local network - it is.
B. Try to connect to the diagnostic tool on port 8081: Did not work when hub was unresponsive. Works fine after power cycling hub to get it up and running
C. Try a network reset: Did not try it, I don't see the point. If it works it will just be up for a day or a week
"Help for Hub Related Issues"
A. Model is C-8
B. Platform/firmware on hub: I have tried a bunch of different versions. It is currently 2.3.9.184 (the latest I could find online)
C. LAN connection: WiFi, DHCP, no DHCP Reservation on router/server
D. Hub powered using a power block. I tried both the one it came with and a known good high power one from my phone
I really appreciate the help. I may be finding the product to be a frustrating experience, but the community is amazing!
Usually this means the hub was disconnected from the network, if the main platform crashes the diag tool typically would still work.
If your mesh system has any sort of "optimization" where it scans and changes the channels by itself, that has been known to cause the hub to get disconnected from Wifi and unable to reconnect for some reason. Sometimes you can turn it off n the settings of the router(s)
I would try temporarily moving the hub to where it can be connected vis Ethernet, see if this solves the issue.
I'm pretty sure that the mesh system tries to optimize, so that might explain the network disconnect.
But wouldn't zigbee/zwave to zigbee/zwave automations continue to work even if the Hubitat loses network access?
The main thing I'm using this for is to allow Zooz Zen32 scene controllers control lights and LED strips. For example pressing button 1 on the Zen32 turns on particular lights and LED strips to particular brightnesses and colors. Button 2 does a different scene. Since its a zwave button I'm pressing (Zen32) controlling a combination of Zigbee and Zwave switches and lightbulbs, not having network should be fine. At least to me that was the whole point of going with Hubitat.
That's what the 'crashed' state is to me. I cannot access via the network, and pressing buttons on the Zen32 has no effect.
It's pretty hard to get hard ethernet to where the hub is, it's probably 150 feet from the cable router. I can move the hub but then I'd need to buy Zigbee / zwave repeaters. Even if that fixed the problem I'd actually be feeling worse - it would mean that my Hubitat requires internet to function.
Is there any useful debugging step other than the hard ethernet?
Frankly I'm about ready to give up on Hubitat - I love the philosophy of the product and the community is amazing. But my experience suggests that the product is too fragile to be useful to anyone but a hardcore hobbyist.
You should use a dhcp reservation on the router, otherwise the hub IP can change and that’s one more thing that can throw off investigations.
It’s not only about losing internet, it’s also about Wifi interfering with Zigbee, since they use the same frequency. It’s worth making sure they are on non interfering channels (lots of posts on this in this forum).
I'll be candid - I just want to control the color of some lights using wall switches. I don't intend to stay in this house forever, and when I sell the house I'd like the next person to still have the feature.
The whole reason I wanted something that didn't have to go through the internet is so that it keeps working even when Hue or The Wiz or whatever doesn't exist. I think its a good bet that 20 years from now most of the cloud-based smarthome systems won't exist. My pool's electronic controls are 30 years old and while the user interface is terrible, they do still work just as well as the day they were installed.
As much as I like Hubitat (and I do), I don't think it meets my needs (which I think are quite basic!) for the following reasons:
No one has an expectation that the C8 can survive unexpected power failures without manual rebuilding of the database
C8 requires advanced configuration of the local network
There does in fact seem to be an interaction between having internet working on the device and being able to do local control
I could live with these if I was the only one who would ever use it, but this is much too much to hand to all of the future owners of my home.
I'm trying out the Aeotec Smartthings hub. It can locally control Zigbee, Zwave, and I think Matter devices. I hate that configuration requires that the Samsung cloud service works, but once it is up and running, configured, it should be set and forget. I'll see if that works for me.
Correct, it may only be less than a 1% chance but under certain conditions an uncontrolled shut down can result in a corrupted database. Which is an easy fix but it is not automatic.
This is false. On a typical home network you can quite literally just plug it in to an ethernet port or connect to Wifi and be up and running right away.
Also false, there are in fact a few users who are what I would call totally "off grid" with their smart homes, and only allow devices to go online if needed so they can update the platform.
