Newbie help - phone not connecting

Mobile Apps Home Assistant Companion for Android
1

Hi ALL,

I’m very new to HA and I have HA Green working and interfacing with my primary phone (Pixel 8 Pro) via the app and its working just fine. I want to use an older phone (Galaxy J7 Prime) just to display a HA dashboard with some minimum controls. So i made sure the J7 connected to my Wi Fi and that’s ok. Then i installed the HA app and it couldn’t find HA. I tried the Chrome browser directly to the IP addr and it also wouldn’t connect saying: x.x.x.x refused to connect.

I didn’t do anything special in HA for my Pixel to connect so i assumed the J7 would just connect. Is there something i need to do in HA to allow the J7 to connect?

Thanks,
Gerry

2

What Android version is the J7?

3

Hi, Just looked up the version in the J7 and its 8.1.0. The HA app said it needed version 5 or later so it should work. But for some reason the HA refuses to let the J7 connect.

Gerry

4

not all devices or networks will show the server but you should be able to use the IP or URL to connect.

before teh app can work you need to solve this issue. If connecting locally you may need to use teh IP address

5

Hi,

I DID use both the local URL and the specific IP address to try to connect with Chrome and each time it said that the IP address “refused to connect.”

6

and you are using the same URLs as the phone thats working correct? have you checked for app and system updates already? Android System WebView should be kept upto date in the play store for the app to work but its strange that Chrome for Android is not working.

Edit: also what error do you see in the app?

7

Hi dshokouhi,

I appreciate your help as this is ALL new to me. When I run the HA app with either the local URL or the numeric IP address this is the error i get:

Unable to connect to Home Assistant.
Serve or proxy hostname lookup failed, please check that the URL is a valid Home Assistant URL.

When i try to access HA through Chrome all i get is it saying that the numeric IP refuses to connect.

How do i check if Android System Webview is up to date and if not how do i update it.

Thanks,
Gerry

8

this points to a local DNS error, what can you tell us about your networking setup?

google play store but given teh error its unrelated, network error needs to be fixed first

9

Hi dshokouhi,

Some success! First I wanted to try connecting with my laptop which I had not yet tried. So I first tried to connect on the laptop with “homeassistant.local:8123” and it connected right away. Then I tried to connect with the numeric IP and I got that same error message as on the J7. But then, dummy me, I realized that when I would try the numeric IP i never added the “:8123” and when I added that the laptop connected just as easily as with the URL.

So then I turned on the J7 and tried to connect with chrome using the numeric IP plus the port number and it connected! However the HA app on the J7 still says it cannot connect no matter what I give it.

I sill would like to get the app to work but at least I can use the J7 as a remote HA controller for the few controls I wanted.

THANKS,
Gerry

10

use the full URL in the app with IP address http://x.x.x.x:8123

11

Hi dshokouhi,

Well, I’ll be darned - THAT WORKED!!!

Thanks very much for all your help.

Gerry

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