Huge data use on Android Companion App

sparkydave · November 7, 2020, 4:53am

I know this has been covered before so I read and checked that ‘Automatically close connection’ is enabled in my app settings, but over the last two days my phone has smashed my data. This app has used 10.45Gb in one day…

For now I have turned off ‘Allow background data usage’ in my phones data settings, however that then prevents location updates going out, and I’m guessing notifications coming in? (will soon find out about that one)

Any ideas? Not sure if this is a bug that has crept in or what. This is on version 2.5.0 as thats the latest showing for me at the moment.

dshokouhi · November 7, 2020, 4:56am

remove live view picture entity cards

sparkydave · November 7, 2020, 5:01am

I don’t have any on my main dashboard but I do have them on other lovelace pages. Are you saying we can’t have them anywhere?

dshokouhi · November 7, 2020, 5:02am

its a bug in the HA front end until it gets resolved theres not much we can do on the apps end. Make sure to properly close camera more info panels too, we noticed that was a culprit to the issue.

sparkydave · November 7, 2020, 5:11am

Bummer. Hopefully it can be fixed soon. It seems odd that my lovelace config has had cameras on it for a long time yet this is the first I’ve had massive data consumption. Has this HA bug only recently popped up?

dshokouhi · November 7, 2020, 5:13am

Honestly I am not sure, I have yet to be able to reproduce it and neither has the other developers including the frontend team. One of the users in that bug mentioned the data usage got better in a recent HA version so not sure if updating HA will make the situation better for you.

sparkydave · November 7, 2020, 5:17am

I’m on HA 0.117.2 at the moment, will try 0.117.5 now.

Burningstone · November 7, 2020, 10:28am

While you’re at it, a new version for the apphas been released as well

sparkydave · November 7, 2020, 10:59am

For whatever reason I’m not yet seeing the new version in the Play Store

Burningstone · November 7, 2020, 11:31am

It has been released yesterday I think, may take some time until it’s available in the app store.

See the blog post here.

sparkydave · November 7, 2020, 10:18pm

Yeah, I had read through that earlier. Just waiting for it to become available for me

kernehed · November 16, 2020, 7:24am

Have this been fixed?
My cellular data in november and december is already drained.

See screenshot of the usage :

sparkydave · November 16, 2020, 7:50am

Not sure, after the HA app chewed up 10Gigs in one day I chose to block it from using data unless the app is open in the foreground. Unfortunately that means my doorbell images don’t come through, just the text part.

I haven’t been game to test it out since… especially since @dshokouhi’s response above suggests that the issue won’t be sorted until a HA side issue is resolved.

raomin · December 27, 2020, 11:15pm

Happened to me as well today with live cameras. 4GB… Can this be fixed?

paulmorabito · December 28, 2020, 7:54am

I have the same problem also. Happy to assist with debugging if needed.

Does anyone know if this is an issue with any of the other HA apps/frontends for Android?

dshokouhi · December 28, 2020, 5:18pm

to my understanding the issue also exists in Chrome for android…just remove your live view picture entity cards and you will be good.

Nothing the app can do until its fixed in the front end. If you guys really need live view picture entity cards take them off the home page and put them in another tab or dashboard. There are quick and easy workarounds for this so you guys don’t eat up data.

TRusselo · January 14, 2021, 3:07am

this happened to my father’s phone today with the companion app.
9 GB used in one day.

He never opens the app. its used for location tracking only.
“auto close connection” has been on for months with no issue until today.
I do have some live view cameras on a lovelace page, but no issue until today on 1 phone, not all.

calisro · March 28, 2021, 10:49pm

I think this extends beyond just cameras (I don’t have cameras). I created a basic template widget on Android along with about 12 toggles and I watched the app use almost a gig of data in 4 hours.

Alarm: 
<font color="{% if is_state('alarm_control_panel.tampa_alarm','disarmed') %}green{% else %}red{% endif %}">
{{ states('alarm_control_panel.tampa_alarm')|title }}</font>
<br/>
Garage: 
<font color="{% if is_state('cover.palmira_garage_2','open') %}red{% else %}green{% endif %}">
{{ states('cover.palmira_garage_2')|title }}</font>
<br/>
FrontDoor: 
<font color="{% if is_state('lock.front_door','locked') %}green{% else %}red{% endif %}">
{{ states('lock.front_door')|title }}</font>
<br/>
BackDoor: 
<font color="{% if is_state('lock.back_door','locked') %}green{% else %}red{% endif %}">
{{ states('lock.back_door')|title }}</font>

It seems like each refresh of that data uses like 7 megs of data. I temporarily disabled background but I believe on Android widgets continue to use data even with that setting disabled. With that setting disabled I still watched data increase for that app. Once I removed that widget (only about 12 toggles remain) data seems to be under control.

Few questions.

What could possibly be using 7Megs of data for each service call on that widget? I can’t imagine that json is that large. My guess is it’s refreshing all state data each time that widget refreshed.
Can anything be done (should I open a issue on git?) To make those widget calls less impactful?

I realize there are Android limitations for widgets using background data but the amount of data in each call seems excessive.

For now I’ve deleted that template widget and am keeping background data off.

dshokouhi · March 28, 2021, 10:53pm

widgets only send a HTTP post and do not account for 7megs thats for sure…your data is probably coming from the frontend being loaded and other images refreshing like media players etc…

use chrome remote debugging to look at the network calls from the HA frontend

https://developer.chrome.com/docs/devtools/remote-debugging/webviews/

Template widgets in particular is a single call to HA: https://developers.home-assistant.io/docs/api/native-app-integration/sending-data#render-templates

calisro · March 28, 2021, 10:58pm

I’ll do that. But the fact that with everything exactly the same (keep app in background. Don’t open it. Background data off for app. All 12 widgets) if I add that widget to my desktop, it starts consuming and continues over the period of time. If I simply remove that widget it goes under control. The rest of the components in my dashboard shouldn’t come into play unless implicitly it’s refreshing that dashboard for each template widget call.