I’m relatively new to using HA, so maybe this question might sound a little too abvious to answer, anyways, I would be very happy
My target is to track my phone & my girlfriend’s phone for regular location updates & automations based on that. This is one of the reasons that I do not want all the data flying around in public.
I set up everything, using the device tracker is working great (as long as I’m logged into my wifi), the log file say that it’s constantly receiving location updates. So everything great.
It also worked well when I had duckdns installed and opened my HA for a few moments to the public. it was working great, so I think I did well so far.
I built that back for the reason mentioned above.
What I am now wondering: Even with that “local” configuration, HA is able to send notifications to the companion apps even if thes are not logged into the wifi at home (today I got an update of my washing machine, when I was at work miles away).
Is there any possibility for the app to transfer data the other way as well? How does HA “know” what app to contact when it is not logged into wifi @ home? I also cannot contact HA when I leave my local wifi. But I still receive the notifications…
Maybe I’m just missing pretty basic IT setup stuff here, but would be nice to bring a little more light into that dark hole for me, please.
P.s.: Logfile in regards to location update shows something like:
LocBroadcastReceiver: Received location update
…
…
…
URLRepository: localURL is: false, usesInternalSSID is: false, uses Wifi is: false
Thanks for your fast reply!
Yeah, I know.
But I killed that setup. It’s no more existing. DuckDNs is not running on my HA. I even killed the URL name, token etc.
as far as I read other comments, this is a normal behaviour of HA. Notifications can be pushed ~however~ to the APP. It’s working great, so no need to worry from this point of view.
I already thought of VPN, but I think with ‘solution’ you meet my feelings quite well… it’s obviously a solution … but I think I wouldn’t go for that if I could send some kind of Notification backwards…
What you are describing is not possible.
If you removed the duckdns then there is no way the communication works.
You must have some other open way, open port on router or nabu casa.
Notifications use firebase so they will arrive even if your instance is not remotely accessible.
Everything else requires a connection to your server either by your own means or Nabu Casa. If you had duckdns working you should just keep using that. Data needs to be able to be sent back to the server.
Basically you don’t need duckdns to open up your HA, you need to open ports on your router.
And that is the difference between a direct connection and nabucasa; the latter doesn’t require open ports on your router, it is HA that initiates the communication with nabucasa, and you communicate through their hub.
thanks for your help!
Yeah - I could definitly use DuckDNS the way I did before. It’s just a question of worht “the risk” compared to what I’m getting from this. Because this would basically be the only thing I would do with it. Track phones.
I will stay for now with “coming home tracking via Wifi”. This works for the most of the things I’m planning to do at the moment.
Anyways. Thanks for letting me know. This helped a lot!
BR
menny
I really don’t get what duckdns has to do with it here…
Duckdns only gives your IP a name, so that you can reach your HA externally by http://TheNameIGave.duckdns.com instead of http://123.123.123.123
If you don’t open ports on your router, it still won’t work🤔
And if you did open ports, killing ‘DuckDNS’ won’t close them
Maybe I was a little too lazy.
I did everything that comes with opening my HA to public.
That means:
Installing duckdns
Setting up a DNS name
Opening a port on my router and setting an internal port to refer to
activating rebind
I hope I did not forget anything.
And all of this I build back to the status when I just installed my HA configuration to my device.
It was just for me to test this.
