Homekit devices "Not Responding"

Configuration
1

Hi all,

I know this has been mentioned before, but no real resolution or problem is proposed.

On a brand new Hass.io install, I’m able to add the HomeKit accessory and see my devices. This works pretty much every time. My devices function for somewhere between 30 and 120 seconds, then they all appear as “Not Responding” in the Home apps on all of my devices. Restarting the Home app on any one device does not help. I’ve deleted homekit.states many times, reinstalled many times and still have the same result.

I’m interested to know. Do others have this working perfectly? There is an open issue on Github: https://github.com/home-assistant/home-assistant/issues/16692 but no movement on it.

I have to assume that this is not affecting lots of people or there would be more discussion on it. I guess what I would like to figure out is what I’m doing differently.

I moved across from Domoticz and Homebridge. Home Assistant has solved a lot of my Domoticz headaches. My Wave devices are working much better, the speed is better and the capabilities without writing huge amounts of script work well. Unfortunately HomeKit integration is the one part I’m missing badly.

Anybody want to throw their hat into the ring?

  • I’ve tried clean installs
  • Obviously removing homekit.states and restarting
  • I only have about 12 entities shared.

The one thing I haven’t tried is deleting my Home and creating it from scratch on the Apple devices. Is there any reason to believe this would help?

Thanks all!

2

The issue you linked will be fixed with the next HAP-python version. Unfortunately I don’t know a release date on that yet.

Deleting your Home shouldn’t change anything, so no need to try.

3

Thanks, I saw you just posted a response on the bug. Assuming (and I am assuming) that this bug is actually what is causing my issue… shouldn’t everybody running the latest version of Hass.io be hitting this issue? Most comments I read say that the native Homekit integration is working fine.

4

I’m not quite sure. There are a lot of other issues that are only experienced by a few. That’s what makes debugging those so difficult.

5

I previously used HomeBridge open source interface, and it experienced this same problem. My personal feeling is it is a bug in iOS handling of bridge devices. Or iOS simply prefers not to talk to bridge devices. Two iPhone6 devices and a newer iPad Pro all on iOS 12.x and they all experienced this issue. :frowning:

6

@FredTheFrog It’s a bit of both. There is currently an open issue with a stale socket, but your right that it still leaves the random issues with the Home App.

7

I’m not convinced of this. I used homebridge on Domoticz for over two years and never once saw this issue.

I’m also not one hundred percent convinced that the bug referenced is really causing the problem. But I guess the only way forward is to wait until that gets fixed and then try again. Unfortunately it really looks like the project isn’t very active these days.

8

I used homebridge for about 2 years as well, until I upgraded to 11.4 and then the problems started with both hass’ native HomeKit and homebridge. Upgrading to iOS 12 seems to have resolved the issues for me.

9

@dmonagle It’s true that it’s not as active as it used to be, but please keep in mind that we all do this in our free time (which isn’t much to begin with). I know that at the moment the core maintainer is working on the camera support. Regarding the fix: Since it’s already in the dev branch, I’ve ask him a few hours ago if we can do an early bugfix release.

10

Thank you for that. Please don’t take it the wrong way. I run a dev team full time and have many side projects in my spare time. Like you all, I’m committed to doing far more than I ever really can. I’ve only been working with HA for a month or so, but I’m sold on it.

I’m not demanding a fix. I’m just trying to gauge how far I need to go for a soloution or work around. It sounds as if it’s worth waiting a little.

Thanks again for looking into this and I look forward to contributing going forward.

1 Like
11

@dmonagle It looks like you don’t have to wait that much longer :wink: https://github.com/ikalchev/HAP-python/commit/855577cfcde1bf2f8562caf9fbefda3e4fa8b497

12

That fix looks super promising. So there was another logged issue on the library:

The commit you linked to resolved it. It was done about a month ago, but never released. From the original report description, it sounds like this would definitely solve the issue.

Now I’m really happy to test this, is there any easy way to SSH into Hass.io and change a python dependency to use a different repo/branch?

13

There might be a way, but Hass.io is definitely not designed to do that. So it might be difficult. I haven’t used it yet though.

Have you heard of Hassbian? It takes care of the basics while allowing for full customization. That’s what I use for my “production” system.

14

Makes sense for me to move to that since I have every intention to do significant development on this. I’ll grab another SD out of the drawer and take a look.

I actually was running this on my Synology and only tried Hass.io because I figured the homekit problem was an issue with my network. But thanks to Hass.io being so easy to set up, I’ve already got a few family and friends trying it out. I’m really impressed with this project.

Thanks for the pointer. I’ll see what I can hack together and then at least we can give a definitive answer to anybody else with this issue.

1 Like
15

If you plan on doing development, I don’t know if a Raspberry might not be to slow for that. I’m using a virtual machine with Ubuntu 18.04. That works fine and is probably a lot faster.

16

Yeah I set up a python virtual env on my Mac last night and it’s running there and working beautifully. It’s a limited setup though because my house needs to keep running so I can’t just swipe my Zwave stick for testing. I’m probably going to end up with a three tier approach for this. Might need to set up a CD environment just to run my house :smile:

17

Makes sense. I’m not doing Z-Wave development (at least at the moment), so the stick can stay in the Raspberry. Probably my lifeline :smile:

1 Like
18

Okay! I just installed the dev branch of HAP-python on my local copy. I added in a second HK bridge to my home and put a few dummy switches in. I’m at a record smashing 45 minutes with all of my devices being responsive. I’m 90% sure that this is all that’s needed to make HomeKit support rock solid.

I think the reason it may hit me harder than some people is that I have about 14 devices capable of controlling homekit in my house. That’s probably causing me to rack up connections at a much faster rate than most people.

If anybody out there is running into this problem, you can install the dev branch of HAP-python by doing the following:

pip install git+https://github.com/ikalchev/HAP-python@dev

My next step is to set up hassbian and copy across my existing config and replace that package. That will be the final proof for me.

19

Great to here it!

Once the new version is released, I’ll try to get into the Home Assistant master as fast as possible. Although, I’ll have to see what they’ll let me do :wink:

1 Like
20

Hello everyone, I experienced the same issue mentioned by @dmonagle. Since I left homebridge (with which I never had a problem), I have not been able to use HA with HomeKit. Not even the continuous updates of Home Assistant have solved the problem. Currently I have installed the latest release without having installed or configured anything else except the HomeKit controller which does not respond in the Home app. Would you know how to fix it? I wish I could go back to using the home app and all my accessories. Thank you.