[SOLVED] Hubitat vanished?

Hi Folks,

Just logged in to my portal.hubitat and it isn't showing the device at all.. I used Google oAuth if that matters.. I have reset the device (power on and off) but still no dice.

Any ideas?

Sorry for the troubles. There is no hub card displayed on portal.hubitat.com? Your hub appears to be running fine and connected to the cloud.

Not sure TBH.. I can't see it so don't know if it is connected... the only active automation I have at the moment triggers at sunset, so I can't see if it is working or not..

Heya.

This is a silly question, but it's bitten me more than once - do you have a VPN running on the machine you're trying to connect to, by any chance? If I leave my work VPN up, then it won't auto-discover the hub on the LAN.

Do you know the IP address of your Hub locally, and can you connect to that directly?

-- Jules

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SMH.... thanks Jules!

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No problem :wink:

As I say... it's caught me out too.

-- Jules

I have a VPN. When running I can't access the hub. I've tried accessing through the IP without success. I've also tried white listing the URL and the IP address. No joy.

Any suggestions?

A little more information would help. What device is the VPN Server and what device is the VPN client?

I am assuming that you are trying to remotely access your Hubitat Hub when away from home. If so, you must make sure the OpenVPN server is configured to allow VPN clients to access everything on the LAN.

I'm using SurfShark VPN. The server (one of many) is in Atlanta. No, I'm attempting to access the hub locally.

Ok, so you're running a VPN client on your computer, that is attached to your LAN? When the VPN client is active, you cannot access the Hubitat Hub on the same LAN, correct?

If so, this is usually caused by the configuration of the VPN Client software. Most corporate VPN Clients are configured this way to prevent the machine from "leaking secrets" to other systems on the same network. Essentially, all local LAN traffic is blocked and everything from that computer must go through the VPN tunnel. Unfortunately, the other end of that tunnel is in Atlanta for you, and thus there is no path to your LAN computers.

I think he uses a free vpn, not a vpn installed in his rpi or nas as a server then the client on the phone, that will not work.

Not a free VPN, but that's the one. Seems I'll have to disable it if I want to access the hub. I don't have a problem accessing the dashboard from my mobile device, though.

Using the cloud links to your dashboards should work fine in your scenario, but if you tried to use the local links to your dashboards you would presumably see the same thing happening as when you try to access your hub’s admin interface.

It would help us if you explained exactly what you’re trying to accomplish. Is the SurfShark VPN used for your job? Or do you use it for privacy? Are you running the SurfShark VPN client on your router, or on individual devices?

Are you using the VPN as a means to connect to Hubitat remotely? If so, using an external VPN provider will not help you in any way. You must host the VPN server on your own network. Some users host OpenVPN on their home router if it is supported. If not, some users host OpenVPN on another home computer, like a Raspberry Pi.

If you explain what your end goal is, we can offer some guidance.

I'm using it for privacy on HOME PC. I'm using the app. Not using anything on my router other than the built-in firewall. My router is supplied by my ISP and is, therefore, inaccessible. I want to keep it as simple as possible.

I don't anticpate accessing the hub much once I have everything in place. So, I'll just disable the VPN as needed.

Ah, that makes sense. I truly believe there is probably a setting in your VPN Client Software on your computer that would allow it to access devices on your home network when the VPN is active. This is usually a setting that can be toggled.

I have an email in to SurfShark asking exactly how/where it can be done.

:wink:

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Interesting topic for me. Bell and Rogers are asking the CRTC for permission to monitor and collect data on all their customers and their ISP partners. But just for advertising :laughing: Yeah, right. I’ll let that happen.

So I’m planning to go dark and have not figured out how I’m going to maintain local access yet.

If your router can act as a whole home OpenVPN client, then you don’t need to change anything on your individual devices. Only internet traffic will be routed through the VPN tunnel. All other traffic will stay local. However, I’m not sure how this would impact Hubitat’s cloud server.

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Experimenting needed. Just have not dug very deep into it yet. Can’t do it from my router, but have not had the router that long, and like all the other features and mesh performance, so that I won’t be changing that. I have a single VPN connection to the US configured on my Synology, and I run a separate router for access to that. Planning to add a second VPN account with an exit to hopefully a trusted provider in Canada. I’m using Strong VPN right now. Will have to play with the config to see if I can maintain local access. Hoping it doesn’t screw up my remote access back to the hub which is via Back to my Mac. I think that will still work, but concerned it might be too slow. I may have to bite the bullet and increase my internet package. Privacy is expensive! :confused: