Had something "interesting" happen this morning and I thought I'd post it here in case anyone else runs into it. I have two HomePod Minis and an Apple TV. Usually the ATV is the controller and the Minis are shown as on standby. But a couple of weeks ago one of the Minis switched to being the controller. The HomeKit integration kept working OK so I just ignored it. My phone and the Minis upgraded to the newest release, but the ATV didn't and I didn't notice that.
This morning all of the 32 HE devices integrated were unresponsive in Home. I tried restarting the integration, but that didn't work. Then I saw that the ATV and my EcoBee thermostat were also both unresponsive. This is what I needed to do to get everything all OK again:
Upgrade the ATV.
Log out of the ATV, then log in again. The ATV was OK in Home then.
Remove the EcoBee from Home and disable the Home integration on the EcoBee.
Reboot the EcoBee and repair it with Home. It was OK then.
Once I took care of the ATV, 21 of the HE devices started responding again. Once the EcoBee was repaired, the other 11 HE devices were OK.
What I found really interesting about this was that although the ATV was supposedly not the controller, when it dropped out all of the HE devices became unresponsive. I would have assumed that the Mini that was acting as the controller would continue to see those devices. Restarting the integration did not work. Once I went through the steps above, the devices started responding automatically.
I'm also unsure what the whole EcoBee thing was about. I wouldn't think it would have any impact on the HE integration, but it did seem to.
Posting this FWIW. I have struggled with the No Response messages and finally gave up. The devices might work for a while but eventually I’d get errors in the Home app. I have 2 apple hubs - a mini and Apple TV and I’m on the current software. After lots of tinkering, nuclear, repairing and app restarts I decided to just use Homebridge v2 running with my Synology.
I moved about 1/2 of the devices over to HB and kept 1/2 on the native integration. I rebooted the hub and the HB devices were working, while the native devices still had the No Response. I restarted the native HK integration and all my devices, both native and thru HB have been working 100% without a No response message.
Could the Homebridge app be somehow responsible?
Thanks for the suggestions. At one point I had it down to 2 dimmers and an outlet with generic zwave drivers. They were the only devices on homekit and i'd still get No Response. With so few common devices i dont think it was a rogue device but i suppose it could have been.
Perhaps the latest updates cured the issue and coincidentally that's when I moved to homebridge. I'm going to gradually move devices back to homekit and see if it will stay running.
I'm going to guess double NAT isn't the core issue, as the LAN connections don't "know" that they're in a double NAT configuration, they only see whatever their LAN subnet is, irrespective. NAT will only impact connections that transit the gateway/router to the WAN. Even so, if it's done correctly, it shouldn't impact anything, even connections that need to connect or receive connections from the WAN.
Anecdote: I'm (intentionally) running double NAT and things have been stable of late.
Folks need to keep in mind that Apple is making changes alongside everything else ... 16.3 has changes in it and from what I was able to see, 16.3 didn't even release in-sync across that various hubs (ATV / Homepod[mini]). Not saying that's causing problems, but just a reminder that there's multiple things in flux. What absolutely will impact things is issues w/ mDNS propagation and it seems there may be some things in flux in this space, as well, as I just saw a major update from scrypted with some significant changes to mDNS handling. Related? Dunno, but useful to keep in mind that there's a fair number of things in play in this complex space.
@gopher.ny - since last night I’m seeing no response from Hubitat exposed devices again. I hadn’t had the hourly restart enabled, but I enabled that after doing a restart. I also rebooted the Hub. Just now I installed the latest update as well. Nothing has helped. Everything else is good in Home, just the devices exposed through this. Homebridge plugin using Maker API is fine as well. The Discovery App does not seem to see the Hubitat hub under _hap._tcp ?!
Did you happen to update the router by any chance? My Eero update knocked out HomeKit connection, for one. Took updating AppleTV and a few reboots all around to make things work again.
I ran the latest update last night and went to bed. I also unplugged the HomePod mini that was the current hub and forced a switch to a different hub (another mini) before plugging the hub back in.
This morning everything seems to be happy. Was probably the home hub
Is there any way to force HomeKit integration to restart ?
I have the "keep restarting homekit each hour" switch enable, but after a while ( many days) I'll get the noresponse on my HomeKit. I then reboot the hub ( even if it would trigger my Lifx problem ) and the Homekit integration will starts working again.
I dont know if the hourly restart stop working or what. I toggled the switch ( wit a save) and that didnt trigerred a restart as I was hoping. Just a HE reboot did the job.
Did you try hitting the "Restart Integration" in blue? I haven't had this happen in quite a while, and I have "Restart hourly" disabled, but have seen "ignored capabilities" (temperature) showing up as "unresponsive" in Apple Home. Hitting "Restart Integration" has always fixed it for me (made them go away). I should add that I have all of my Apple devices on 16.4 beta 3.
It just restarts the integration on command instead of waiting for the hourly restart, or if you opt to not enable hourly restarts it’s a way to just do it when necessary.
I seem to be having this issue also. I am on iOS 16.4 and the new HomeKit architecture. Devices in Apple home seem to work fine but all devices brought in through just the HomeKit integration seem to go unresponsive after some time. Tried restarting the integration and that didn’t change anything. Restarting the HE does work. Anyone have any other suggestions?
Try excluding your devices from the HomeKit integration 1-by-1 and seeing if it starts responding after each removal. I had some devices that were causing the integration to freeze completely.
I guess I can try that. I have a handful of devices but they all fall into 2 different devices. They are either a ge Enbrighten smart outlet or a Fibaro flood sensor.
I did try toggling on the switch that restarts the integration frequently. Let’s see if that does anything.
) and the Homekit integration will starts working again.
