When I am on my home network, the app switches to the local network as it should. But when I leave and am on another wifi network (away from my house) it will switch over to the local network and obviously can't find the dashboards. I have not found an easy way to switch it back to the cloud from within the app. How can I switch it to the cloud and how do I stop it from switching the local network when I am not on the network connected to my HE? Both networks are my personal networks, in two different locations.
When you are in the main dashboard menu. Look at the top right corner. You will see a cloud or Home icon. Clicking on the cloud will out you in local and clicking on the home will switch you to cloud.
When on that Wifi network can you get on the internet and try the cloud link directly from your browser? Sounds like that network is restricting you in some way. If you can run the cloud dashboard when on the mobile network, it's not the dashboard.
I can get on the cloud dashboard when on the mobile network. When I switch back to wifi, if I am fast enough and cancel the switch to local, i have access to the cloud dashboards over wifi and everything works fine. it will eventually try and switch back to the local network and I start the process over again.
How does the app determine that it is on the local network with the hub?
When you click at the bottom left on the word "dashboard" it should bring you back to the main dashboard page regardless of local or cloud.
I am not really sure but my guess about determine local or cloud is based on both Geofence and the IP. Just a wild guess though.
But, as mentioned in the previous post, you can switch to the cloud dashboard manually. That doesn't work for you? I also asked about accessing the cloud dashboard from your mobile browser on that wifi network. Does that work correctly or no? You need to answer the questions we're asking or we can't help you.
It's a lot simpler than that. It tries to connect to the hub locally and if it can't it switches to cloud. Your phone might not have the same IP on your home network if you don't have a static set up for it. Or you might have the same IP on a different network. That wouldn't really work. And geolocation doesn't have to be set up for the app to work to access dashboards.
I changed my router IP and it connects to the cloud.
But this was the screen that I was getting when it would switch to local, without being on the local network with HE. I can could connect to the cloud both on mobile and on wifi.
I have two networks in two different locations. When I was away from the hub Network, it would still try and connect to the local hub and give me the 404 error with no easy way out.
I changed the away router IP address and the issue was resolved.
I'm just guessing as I don't know the internals of the app, however, I suspect that the app looks at the "local" address of the hub, and determines if you are locally connected to the same network segment by looking at your phones (or other device) currently assigned IP. Since many home networks default to the same handful of RFC1918 /24 IP Blocks (192.268.1.0/24, 10.0.0.0/24, etc.); if you connect to a WiFi network that is in the same default range as your home network, it will assume that you are there and try to directly connect to the local IP.
This is why changing one of the routers IP helped (or switching to the cellular network) … you simply moved one of the networks to a non-default range so it no longer collided with the other network. For the record, it's good practice to move networks out of the default router range anyway.
What if you are on someone else's home wifi? That wouldn't work now would it?
Changing your router's IP will not necessarily change the settings of the DHCP server in the router or the addresses that it will assign to devices that join the network it creates. The two are mutually exclusive.
I'm telling you, it looks for the hub via the "local" ip and if it can't find it, it switches to cloud. It's a simpler than you are trying to make it.
As stated, I was simply guessing about the internals of the app, however, your comment …
Struck enough of a nerve that I figured it’d be worth a few minutes of my time to find the correct response here. In the caveat of my guess, from a networking perspective, nothing I said was inaccurate, but you made a good point.
So I simulated the scenario and traced the activity.
From what I saw, when you open the app, it always starts by accessing the the cloud to resolve the “local” ip of the hub (I assume), and then attempts to connect directly. If there is no response, it fails up to the cloud. At this point, you could be on your friends 192.168.1.0/24 network and reach the device on your home network that’s also using 192.168.1.0/24 (for instance if your Hubitat was 192.168.1.35) … unless.. Something on your friends network responds at that .35 address (didn’t narrow down if it’s any response or just response from specific ports); in that case would break as the OP described.
As an aside, IP configuration and DHCP configuration are not mutually exclusive or inclusive of each other by any means, they are entirely independent. For the last 5-10 years, however, they've started to simplify residential router configuration for the masses by making the DHCP range automatically determined by the set internal IP of the router … some can be manually overridden, but many end users don't need or want to understand the underlying technologies that make networks work, and if it’s automagic there are less tech support calls to field.
The OP had indicated that they changed the away routers IP and it solved their problem. This implies they either understood that the DHCP configuration needed to be updated and did it, or it happened transparently; either way, the result was the same and the away network moved to a block distinctly different from the first. I was simply trying to provide some context either for the OP or anyone else that happens upon the question as to why it may have helped. Thanks to you, I think it’s more complete now.
